


Remembering Innocence

by orphan_account



Category: Fallout: New Vegas, Homestuck
Genre: Conditioning, Crossover, Drinking, Drug Use, Humanstuck, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-01-21 03:11:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 49,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1535405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat Vantas is injured during his first patrol as a soldier for the NCR. Instead of spending a boring week to recover, Karkat and two other new recruits are tasked with handling the new prisoner at the base: a captured Legion scout named Eridan Ampora.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you have never felt so exhausted in your entire fucking life. You're currently sitting on an old, worn cot, wincing as the doctor stitches shut the gash in your arm. Unbelievable. Your first real assignment, and you get slashed with a fucking spear. It wasn't even supposed to be all that dangerous, just routine border patrol, nothing special. You guys hadn't expected to walk straight into a Legion scouting party, and the ensuing firefight had been complete chaos. Of course it had to be  _you_ that was the only one to get more than a few scrapes and bruises. You'd only left training a month ago, for fuck's sake. God, the officers that'd been with you on that patrol must be laughing their asses off right now, way to fucking go Past Karkat. 

The doctor finishes stitching shut  your wound and begins to bandage it, ignoring your flinching as the fabric presses against flesh that's still stinging from antiseptic. "You'll need to take at least a week off to recover," he says as he fixes the bandages into place. Your eyes widen with horror.

"A  _week_?!" you say, "What the hell for? It's just a fucking cut! Can't you just shoot me full of stimpaks or something?"

The doctor sighs and begins to clean up. "We can't just throw stimpaks at every injury you guys get," he says, somewhat testily, "And there are people in the emergency care tent that need those supplies a hell of a lot more than you do. You'll just have to suck it up."

Oh yeah. You'd forgotten about those guys. They'd been sent to guard a caravan and make sure it left the Mojave safely, and they'd walked straight into Legion troops. Kinda like your patrol did, except with a lot less dead legionaries and a lot more dead NCR troops. You silently berate yourself for complaining about your cut and forgetting about them.

"Well, great," you mutter, "I get to sit on my ass and die from boredom all week. Awesome."

"I want you to come back here every morning," the doctor says, ignoring you, "So I can check up on how you're doing. Don't do anything too strenuous with that arm until I say you can. Understand?"

"Sure, fine, whatever," you say.

The doctor dismisses you after that, sending you back to your tent. You trudge through the barracks, mentally swearing at everything and everyone you pass. You want nothing more than to just flop onto your mattress and sleep.

Of course you aren't that lucky. Captor and Maryam are already in the tent, and they both look up from whatever undoubtedly fascinating conversation they'd been having as you stumble in. You glare daggers at both of them.

"There he is," Captor says, grinning and putting all of his fucked-up, crooked teeth on display, "So, did the doc tell you how much time you have left? I want first dibs on your stuff."

"Shut the fuck up," you groan, "The last thing I want is your lispy ass making fun of me right now."

"Wow, touchy," Captor says. The smug asshole. You'd trained together back in New California, and even now you're still not sure if you're friends with him or hate his guts. Maryam is at least more tolerable; you've only just met her recently, but she's only a couple months ahead of you experience-wise, and she's been decent enough so far.

Right now she's giving you a sympathetic look. "Now, now," she says, "Let's not tease Karkat; he's exhausted."

You can't tell if she's mocking you or just concerned, but you decide to ignore that. You wish she'd stop calling you by your first name, you only met a couple weeks ago and barely know each other, what the hell, but you feel too awkward to ask her to stop. You settle for merely stumbling over to your ratty mattress and collapsing onto it, not even bothering to put on a clean shirt.

"What, you're just gonna sleep and ignore us?" Captor asks.

"Yep," you say, not lifting your face from the mattress.

"Not even going to ask how the rest of your patrol is?"

"Nope."

"Wow, if you insist, Grouchy McButthurt," Captor says.

You groan again, lifting your head to give him another glare. "What the fuck does that even mean?"

"That you're a surly asshat," Captor replies, "But what else is new."

"You're not going to let me sleep, are you," you say flatly.

"No, sorry," Captor says, grinning again. He's not sorry at all.

"Boys," Maryam says, "Let's not spend another night trading insults. I'd rather not get another migraine from you two."

"What the fuck do you guys  _want_ _,_ " you moan, "I got a chunk taken out of me by a legionary today and I  _really_ want to fucking sleep right now, so spit it out and let me rest."

"We should start up a swear jar with you," Captor says, "We'd be so rich."

"There actually was something we wanted to tell you," Maryam says, plowing over Captor as if he hadn't said anything, "One of the patrols brought back a Legion scout."

That gets you to sit up, your tiredness gone in a flash. "What? Really?" you say, "They actually managed to capture one? I thought they all offed themselves whenever we try."

"Well, this one didn't get the chance," Maryam says, "From what we've heard, they managed to surprise and restrain him before he was able to do anything. They've got him holed up in the terminal for interrogation."

"Yeah," Captor adds, "But they haven't been able to get very far. The stubborn asshole clams up whenever they try to talk to him."

"Well, duh, he's from the Legion," you say, "They're all brainwashed, death-or-glory little bastards that think their Caesar is a fucking god. He won't betray him if we just  _ask_."

"That's certainly an interesting description," Maryam says dryly. "In any case, Officer Peixes has been requesting help with the interrogation. Sollux and I have been considering going, and we were wondering if you wanted to, as well."

"What, they're just gonna let a bunch of new recruits waltz in and talk to such a valuable prisoner?" you say.

"Yeah, apparently Officer Peixes wants someone that he wouldn't recognize so that he might be friendlier towards them or something, I don't know. It sounds like a load of bullshit to me, but it's better than doing drills," Captor says.

"Ugh," you grumble, "Why do you even do drills, anyway? You're like tech support or something."

Captor shrugs. "It's mandatory."

You roll your eyes. "Fuck it. Fine. Let's just go down to the terminal building and ask politely to interrogate the prisoner. What could go wrong?"

Maryam smiles at you. "That's the spirit."

\---

Your name is Eridan Ampora and you are miserable. You're sitting in a stiff chair that's impossible to get comfortable in no matter how much you fidget, your hands are bound and tied to the back of the chair so tightly that you're pretty sure you can't feel them anymore, every muscle in your body aches, and you can't do anything about any of this. You spit out another wad of saliva and blood. Those NCR bastards had beaten the everloving shit out of you when they caught you.

Caught you. The words send a shiver of revulsion up your spine. You couldn't even die honorably, those pieces of shit had surprised you and restrained you before you'd even known what was going on. You're burning with shame and anger at being humiliated so much, to be captured like a fucking animal instead of dying on the point of your own spear. You failed. You failed the Legion, you failed Caesar, you're a fucking worthless failure and all that's left for you is to die, and those NCR fucks won't even let you do that.

One of them is staring you down right now. You don't know his name, but he's been trying to get you to talk to him for what feels like hours. The most you've done is spat in his face. You can see he's getting increasingly frustrated, and you're pretty sure that they're gonna bring out the torture pretty soon. He's in the middle of asking you yet again what you were doing so far in NCR territory (as if it wasn't obvious) when the heavy door suddenly swings open.

Standing there is a woman you've never seen before. She's got long, silky black hair that spills down in wavy curls, and she's looking at you with a kind of warm sympathy that takes you by surprise. You knew that women were allowed to be officers in the NCR, but you'd never expected any of them to look like this. She looks almost... friendly. It's been a long time since you've seen a woman look at you with anything other than fear, hatred, or sadness.

"That'll be enough," she says, and of course her voice is lovely too, "I'll take it from here."

"Yes, Officer Peixes," the man says. He hastens from the room, leaving you alone with this Peixes.

"So," she says brightly, "You're the one everyone's all riled up about!"

You don't respond. She doesn't seem deterred by this.

"Can you tell me what your name is?" Officer Peixes asks.

You feel a flare of anger. How dare this NCR soldier, this NCR  _woman,_ speak to you like you're equals. You glare at her and bare your teeth in a snarl.

"You don't fuckin deserve to know my name, you worthless piece a shit," you snap.

"Well," Peixes says, still as happy as ever, "At least you're talking now."

You blink. Oops.

"I've got some new recruits coming in to try and talk to you," she goes on, "Let's try and keep this as civil as possible, alright?"

Fuck it, no point in trying to keep quiet anymore. "Oh, so you're bringing in the fresh meat to gawk at the captured legionary? I'm  _honored_." You make sure to lay on the sarcasm extra thick there.

"I'm sure you are," Peixes says. She moves over to the door, opens it, and pokes her head out. "You can come in now!"

Three people enter the room. You glare at each of them in turn. They all look to be about your age. One is a scrawny little fuck wearing two-tone glasses and staring at you like you're something really funny. The next is a woman that carries herself with a kind of formality and elegance that actually kind of impresses you a little. The last one makes you snort with amusement. He's a runty little thing, with dirty, mussed up brown hair and a scowl on his face. He's got one arm bandaged. Good, the NCR scum probably deserved it. Dick.

"Look at these pathetic little worms," You say, leering, "This is the best the NCR can come up with? Hoover Dam is ours if  _this_ is all you've got."

"Nice insults there," the scrawny one says, "Glad to see you're as smart as you look."

You splutter a little. Did he just call you  _stupid_? "I'll have you know I'm the best damn scout in the Legion," you snarl, "So you can shut your fuckin mouth!"

"'Best damn scout,' huh?" he says, "And yet you still got caught."

Your retort is cut off by Officer Peixes. "That's enough," she says, "Now, the reason I've brought you three in here is because I want to see if someone unfamiliar might be able to help him. He's a scout, and most of them know every higher up soldier in our base, so some fresh meat--his words, not mine--might be able to break through to him."

"Help him?" the elegant woman asks, "What do you mean?"

"Break his conditioning, of course," Peixes says brightly.

"I'm still fuckin here, you know," you snap, "An I don't fuckin need  _help_ , an even if I did, I wouldn't get it from  _you_ , you NCR pieces a trash. The Legion is the fuckin pinnacle a Wasteland society an they didn't condition me, they fuckin taught me how to live, an I ain't lettin scumbags like you tell me that what they taught me was wrong, it ain't wrong. I wouldn't betray Caesar for the fuckin  _world_ an you can all go fuck yourselves."

There's a pause. "Well," Peixes says, "I hope you've gotten that out of your system."

You glare at her, seething. Conditioning. Fucking ridiculous. They didn't condition you, they took you inand taught you that the way you'd been living before, in that little village with your mother and father and brother had been fucking shameful. The Legion was order, the Legion was stability. They'd instilled their values into you when they'd taken control of your village when you were ten years old. Your father hadn't agreed with them, so they made an example of him, left his body there to rot. At first you had been upset, but after being taken in you saw how wrong your father had been. The Legion was uniting the Wasteland, providing law and order that they hadn't had since the Great War. You hadn't been  _conditioned_ , you had been taught. These NCR assholes are the ones that are wrong.

Peixes claps her hands, startling you out of your thoughts. "Alright, then!" she says, "Let's get started!"

\---

"It's like talking to a rock, Vantas," Captor says as he exits the cell.

You sigh. "I guess it's my turn now."

Officer Peixes had explained that you were to talk to him in shifts, and to try and wear him down until he started opening up. They didn't want information out of him, she'd explained, they wanted to see if they could reverse the brainwashing the Legion had done to him. Something about the soldiers being slaves just like the people the Legion has captured, and trying to fix them. You don't really see the point, after all, what's stopping them from turning on you after you "fix" them, but it's not your place to question it. You try to mentally prepare yourself for a few hours of pointless, roundabout arguing as you enter the cell.

The prisoner doesn't look up when you enter. He's just as much of a mess as before. His brown hair is hanging around his face in a dirty mess, and you can see a blonde streak in it that you're pretty sure is dyed. The Legion has access to hair dye, who knew. His cuts have stopped bleeding, and now he's covered in streaks of drying blood. He's covered in bruises, some of which are swollen.

You clear your throat. You've been mulling over what little you know about the Legion over the past few hours, and you're pretty sure you've got a plan to break through to this guy. Peixes told you to try and crack his brainwashing, and you're pretty sure you know how.

"So, uh," you begin, feeling extremely awkward, "You gonna tell me your name?"

He looks up at you. Christ, are his eyes  _purple_? "Why should I?" he says flatly. His voice is hoarse. You're pretty sure you know why; you'd heard the way he'd been shouting at Captor before you'd entered.

You shrug. "I can't just say 'hey, you' this entire time," you reply, "And I'd really like to cut the bullshit and just try to have an honest conversation with you, 'cause I don't really have the patience for any of that right now."

He blinks. "That woman," he says after a moment, "Maryam. She tried bein all friendly and actin like we were fuckin equals. I ain't fallin for that. You just want information outta me, an then you're gonna kill me once I'm useless."

"I thought you wanted to die," you say.

"On my own terms, asshole!" he snarls. Whoa, you struck a nerve there. "There's no greater honor than to die in the name a Caesar, but I ain't gonna sell myself out to the fuckin NCR."

You roll your eyes. "Cute," you say, "So, what, you kill yourselves when you lose so that no one can get information out of you? And you think this is honorable? Don't you see why they taught you that?"

His brow furrows. "'Cause Caesar said so," he says slowly, "To die in his name is to bring honor to the Legion, and ourselves."

"No, they taught you that so you could be as expendable as possible," you reply, "They want pawns they can send out without worry about them being captured and giving away information. Honor has nothing to do with it."

He sneers. "Liar."

"Wow, denial. Didn't expect that. Oh wait, I did. I'd really rather not play this 'I'm going to deny everything you say no matter how logical it is because I'm a brainwashed puppet' game, because if I have to deal with any more bullshit today, I'm gonna have a rage aneurysm."

He narrows his eyes, then his gaze flicks to your arm. "Where did you get that?" he blurts out.

"Legion ambush," you say, "We kicked their asses, though."

He sniffs. "Hmph. You were lucky. If I was in charge of the guys that fought you, we woulda wiped the fuckin floor with you."

You raise an eyebrow. "Oh, really?"

"Yep," he says, suddenly smug. Oh god. "I'm not just a good scout, I'm a damn good commander, too."

"I'm not even gonna bother with that," you mutter.

"The fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing," you say, "So, the Legion's better than everyone?"

"Duh," he says, "You're all ignorant savages an Caesar's the only one in the entire Wasteland with any sense. Besides me, a course. Maybe Legate Lanius. An the rest a the Legion. 'Cept the slaves."

"Christ, you're a mess," you say.

He looks incredibly offended at that. You go on, regardless. "Look, I'm not gonna beat around the bush with you. Being nice with you doesn't work, and being a snarky asshole to you doesn't work. Maryam and Captor already tried. I'm just gonna be honest. You're a complete fucking mess. I don't know if you were born into the Legion or assimilated, and I really don't care, but it doesn't really matter because you're a fucking puppet either way. You act like Caesar is God's gift to mankind when everyone is nothing more than a fucking pawn to him. He's not a god, he's some old guy that somehow manged to get a bunch of tribals under his thumb and turn them into slavers. And that's what the Legion is: a bunch of slaves. Sure you're not a slave like most, but you're not a person to him. You're a tool that got used up and thrown away. You don't matter to them anymore."

You pause to take a breath, then notice his expression. He looks absolutely furious, and tears are welling up in his eyes. "How dare you," he seethes, "How fuckin _dare_ you! The Legion is fuckin  _order_ , it's _stability_ , you NCR trash don't even know what the fuck you're talkin about. I'm the only one outta my whole family that understood, my brother ran off like a fuckin coward, my parents are dead an they fuckin deserved it, an I woulda grown up an ignorant savage without the Legion. I'm, I'm... I'm a fuckin soldier, I owe my _life_ to the Legion, an I won't listen to your fuckin  _slander_ because you're  _lying_."

He breaks off, panting. You stare at him, eyebrows raised, for a long moment. "You done?" you ask.

He just glares at you. The two of you sit in silence for several minutes, staring at each other.

"How old were you?" you say finally.

He blinks. "What?"

"When you joined the Legion."

"I... I was ten."

You nod. "Thought so." You sigh and cross your arms. "I think it's time we wrapped this up," you say, "I wanna go ask Officer Peixes something, and you look like you need a break anyway."

"You're leavin?" he asks, looking surprised.

"That's what I just said," you reply, "My name's Karkat Vantas, by the way."

He just stares at you. After a moment, he says, "Why are you guys doin this?"

"Doing what?"

He looks a bit lost. "Keepin me here. Talkin to me like this. You're not... what I expected the NCR to be like. Not really."

"You're not what I expected the Legion to be," you reply. You turn and move to leave.

"Eridan," he suddenly says behind you, stopping you in your tracks.

"What?" you ask, looking over your shoulder at him.

"My name is Eridan Ampora," he says.

You nod. "Nice to meet you, Eridan."

You exit the room, leaving him. He doesn't say anything else. You nod to the guard as you pass, and head towards Officer Peixes' quarters. You want to have a word with her before you return to your tent and meet up with Captor and Maryam. You think you've found something interesting to do while you wait for your arm to heal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this at 1 am and I have no excuse.
> 
> The way the Legion functions has always been interesting to me, mainly due to how the soldiers are just as enslaved as the workers are. I thought that'd be a fun mindset to explore with my favorite pale ship, Erikar.
> 
> 1 am ideas are the best.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Feferi without using a single fish pun feels so wrong. There is an actual reason for it besides me being terrible at wordplay; barely anyone in the Wasteland even knows what fish are.

Your name is Feferi Peixes and you're in the middle of filling out a report (or trying to) when someone knocks on the door of your office. You look up, startled, then straighten your posture and rearrange your desk so that it looks a little bit less disorganized. You make sure to slip your spare sheet of paper covered in doodles under a stack of supply orders. You're not sure who's at the door, but whoever they are, they don't need to know that you draw little cartoony pictures of pre-war animals when you're supposed to be working.

"Come in," you say.

It doesn't come as much of a surprise when the door swings open and reveals Private Vantas. You beam at him. Privates Captor and Maryam had already reported in and told her they'd made little progress with the prisoner. Vantas being here so early must mean he at least has  _something_ to report.

"Officer Peixes, ma'am," he says, standing stiffly with his hands clasped behind his back, "May I have a word with you?"

"Sure!" you say, "C'mon in! And you don't need to be all formal around me, I'm not gonna bite you! Call me Feferi, by the way."

Private Vantas relaxes a little. "Oh. Uh, alright Offi--Feferi." He enters the room, shutting the door behind him, and takes a seat in the rickety wooden chair in front of your desk.

You look at him expectantly, still smiling. "Is it okay if I call you Karkat?" you ask.

"Uh, yeah," Karkat says. He looks slightly uncomfortable, and you feel a pang of sympathy. He isn't much younger than you, and here he is, all nervous because you outrank him. You make a mental note to have a little chat with the troops about being nice to new recruits.

 "So, what's this about?" you say, mostly to be polite. It's not like you haven't already guessed.

"It's the prisoner, ma'am--I mean, Feferi," Karkat says. He pauses, and it takes you a moment to realize he's waiting for a response.

"Yes?" you prompt him.

He takes a deep breath, and you smile encouragingly. The poor guy looks so unsure around you. It's hard to equate this hesitant young man with the one you'd seen during drills. There he'd been a sight to behold; making up for what he lacked in size and strength with the sheer force of his willpower. Not to mention the extremely entertaining and creative verbal smackdowns he'd occasionally unleash on one of his fellow soldiers. The guy is an angry, passionate little ball of potential, you just know it. Right now, though, he's looking at you like you might bite his head off at any minute. That strikes you as kind of sad.

It takes another few moments for Karkat to actually begin to speak. "I have a... request," he says hesitantly, as if he's unsure as to how to put it.

You fold your hands under your chin and lean against your desk, looking at him expectantly.

"I want to come back and try to... work with Eridan some more," Karkat says, "I mean, with my arm like this, I figure it's a way to make myself useful, and--"

"Wait, hang on," you interrupt, "Who's Eridan?"

"Oh, yeah. Shit. Eridan's the prisoner's name. Eridan Ampora. He told me right before I left." Karkat rubs the back of his head self consciously. "Probably should've mentioned that first."

You wave your hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it! So," you lean forward, your eyes shining with excitement, "Tell me what happened! I want to know everything!"

And tell you he does. You sit in silence as he talks, your fingers laced together and your eyes never leaving his face. You nod occasionally, your brow furrowed. He describes the conversation he had with Mr. Ampora, and you make sure to listen as intently as you can. It doesn't take long for Karkat to finish, and when he does, you fold your hands on the desk and grin at him.

"Karkat," you say, "I think I'm gonna take you up on that little request of yours. Report to me first thing tomorrow morning, and bring Kanaya and Sollux. I'd like to include them in this project." You resist the urge to point out how adorable the shocked expression on his face is.

"Wh..." he says, "But, why Maryam and Captor? They barely got anywhere with the guy. I mean, my conversation with him didn't go anywhere either, but I got him to tell me his name at least. Not to mention the fact that they're already busy, they don't have a week off like me."

"I'm one of the commanding officers here," you point out, "I'm pretty sure I can bend the rules a little bit. I can have you guys rotate in shifts or something. And I'm including them," you say as Karkat opens his mouth again, "Because I think having different people working with him will help with the healing process. We can't have him just becoming friendly with one person, after all!"

"'Friendly' is not the word I'd use to describe how he feels about me," Karkat says dryly.

"Well he certainly seems to be less hostile with you than everyone else," you say brightly. You stand up and hold out your hand. "I'm looking forward to working with you, Karkat!"

He gets to his feet and shakes your hand quickly, like he's afraid it's going to burn his fingers. Man, he needs to loosen up. "Same here," he mutters, "I'll just, uh, get back to my tent, then."

"Off you go!" you say, "Remember: I want you three down here first thing tomorrow! Right after you check in with the doctor, I mean."

"Yeah," Karkat says as he leaves, flashing you an unsure smile. That's a start. "See you then."

You wait until he's gone, then shove the unfinished reports into the "I'll Do It Later I Swear" folder. Colonel Hsu won't mind if you turn in those papers a few hours later than expected. You don't have time to fill out boring paperwork, anyways. You have a list of things that need to get done, starting with paying a visit to the medical tents. You're grinning as you leave your office. You can't wait to start working with Mr. Ampora.

\---

Your name is Eridan Ampora and you are bored. So bored. The levels of boredom you are currently experiencing are so vast that mere mortals cannot possibly comprehend them. Excluding you, because you're the one tied to a fucking chair, in an empty cell, in a dilapidated old airport-turned-NCR-military-base, and  _now_ those assholes aren't even bugging you anymore. You spend a while trying to count the cracks in the walls, then eventually tire of that and start looking for shapes in the blotchy water stains all over the ceiling.

You hiss as your stomach cramps and gurgles. When are those dumbasses planning on feeding you? How long has it been since that Vantas guy left? Hours, probably. They no doubt decided that interrogating you was worthless and left you to rot here. You are literally going to die of boredom, all alone and tied to a goddamn chair. Assuming starvation doesn't get you first. Christ, you're pathetic. First you get captured by NCR soldiers, then you get deemed so worthless that they didn't even bother torturing you for information. You are definitely the best legionary. It's you. God, you're so bored.

When the door to your cell swings open without any warning whatsoever, you yelp and feel your heart jump into your throat a little. Oh. It's that Peixes woman. She's not alone, either. Some guy is with her that you've never seen before. While Peixes is smiling at you like she's seeing an old friend, he's looking at you with his lips pursed and his eyes narrowed. Assessing you. You glare right back at him.

Judging from the rubber gloves on his hands and the suspicious red stains on his T-shirt, he's a doctor. Uh oh. You can't think of any reason why they'd bring in a doctor, besides letting him provide medical help in the torture session you just know is coming next.

"Hello, Eridan!" Peixes says.

You curl your lip. "I guess it didn't take long for Vantas to tell you my name," you say. You don't know why the fact that he told this woman is making something in your chest ache. He is a soldier, and it would be foolish to assume that he wouldn't tell his commanding officer something like that. Knowing this doesn't make the uncomfortable sensation go away. In fact, it makes it worse.

"Wow, he even does that weird shit with his V's. 'Wantas,' good lord," the doctor mutters, just loud enough for you to hear.

You decide right there that you hate this man.

"Hush," Peixes says. Turning back to you, she goes on, "Eridan, this is Nurse Brooks."

"Charmed," you say sarcastically. You eye Brooks warily.

"There's no need to be frightened!" Peixes says, "I just brought Robert--Can I call you that?--here so he could patch you up a little! I know you're not seriously injured, but some of those cuts look like they kind of sting."

"I ain't frightened, I'm  _cautious_ ," you snap, "An get away from me. I won't let you assholes poke at me with that weird shit I know you got."

Peixes just sighs at that. "I know you guys have a weird thing against modern medicine for some reason--"

"Usin artificial stuff to live longer makes you a coward," you sneer, "If you spend all your time tryin to find a way to run from death, you ain't livin."

"What do you mean by that?" Peixes asks.

You blink. Isn't it obvious? "If you make avoidin death your purpose, then you don't fill out whatever your true reason for existin is. People that aren't fit to live don't have a purpose, so they're left to die. Everyone in the Legion knows that." You don't get why Peixes and Brooks are looking at you like you've grown a second head.

"That's very sad," Peixes says after a moment.

You scoff. "It ain't sad, it's how life fuckin works. You NCR bleedin hearts think you're helpin weak an sick people who can't take care a themselves, but all you're doin is makin sure you got more docile little subjects to lord over. God, why am I even arguing with you idiots about this? It's not like you'll fuckin listen to me, even though I'm right."

Brooks raises his eyebrows. "Wow. Officer Peixes," he says, turning to look at the woman, "We should probably start. Do you think we need the sedative yet?"

"Whoa, what?  _Sedative_? Hell fuckin no, get the fuck away from me you fuckin pricks--" your furious (and somewhat scared) shouting dies in your throat as Peixes steps over to you and crouches down, placing one hand on your shoulder. You're too surprised by this to do anything but gawk. She's smiling at you, and her eyes look so big and sympathetic under those weird pink-purple goggles she's wearing. You could bite her, or spit in her face, or continue cussing her out, but you don't. She might be a total nutjob, but you can tell that she genuinely believes in the shit that's been spewing out of her mouth. You actually feel kind of sorry for her. You wonder if all NCR soldiers are as delusional as she is.

Peixes smiles at you for another moment, then says, softly, "We won't hurt you. I know you probably won't believe me, but we really do want to help. All we want to do right now is make you a little more comfortable in here."

"Comfortable?" you echo, dumbfounded. What the fuck.

She giggles. Actually _giggles_ , how old is this woman.  "Silly! Did you think we were gonna leave you tied to a chair all day?"

"Yes," you say without hesitation.

Peixes sighs. "Ah, well. First things first!" She stands up and looks down at you in a disconcertingly kindly way. "We should probably get you out of that armor."

" _What_?" you splutter, "No! Why the fuck do you want to do that?"

"So we can get you something more comfortable to wear, what else?" Peixes says, "Bring the supplies in, Brooks. Now," she adds, looking at you with a sudden serious intensity that makes you flinch slightly, "I'm just gonna warn you, Brooks and I are armed, there are guards stationed outside, and we weren't kidding about the sedatives. Just in case you get any ideas," she says, her tone switching back to friendly and warm alarmingly quickly.

You nod, your throat dry. You watch as Brooks leaves the room, only to return moments later with an armful of supplies. At the very top are a ratty T-shirt and an equally worn-down pair of pants. You're not even going to bother trying to comprehend what these crazy NCR fucks are doing anymore.

You're watching Brooks set the supplies out in neat little rows, and you don't notice Peixes moving behind you until you feel a tug on the ropes around your wrist. You start, twisting your head as far as it'll go to see what the fuck she thinks she's doing back there. She just smiles at you. You hear the sound of something sawing through rope, and suddenly your hands are free. God, that feels good. You hurry to stretch your arms out in front of you, hissing at the rush of pins and needles flooding your aching hands. Peixes returns to Brooks' side and smiles again.

She doesn't say anything this time, and instead picks up the ratty clothes and throws them at you. You don't react fast enough and end up with a face full of god-only-knows-how-old cloth.

"Sorry about this," Peixes says, "But we can't exactly leave you alone in here. Just change as fast as you can, alright?"

You gape at her, then just sigh. It's probably best to resign yourself to this madness instead of fighting it. "Sure, why not," you say, "Try not to gawk at my flawless body too much." You miss whatever they say in response as you try to stand and suddenly find yourself stumbling, dizzy as fuck and holy shit okay everything went dark there.

There are hands on you. You blink and look over and see Brooks holding you up. "Steady now," he says, "You haven't eaten in a while, I bet."

You pull away from him. "No thanks to you assholes," you snap. You sigh. "I'm just gonna get this fuckin changin thing over with."

It's a very long next few minutes. It takes you longer than usual to unclasp all of the parts of your armor and strip yourself down to your tunic, as flustered as you are. You silently breathe a sigh of relief as you realize that your tunic allows you to pull pants on without flashing those sick fucks. Even then, you're beet red with embarrassment as you finish putting on the ragged clothes. They don't fit you quite right and hang loosely. They let you keep your glasses, at least, though one of the lenses is still cracked from being captured. You try to express every ounce of hate you are feeling at the moment as you glare at Peixes and Brooks.

"What now?" you ask.

You immediately regret it when you hear what Peixes has to say next. "Time for Brooks to clean you up a little!" she says. When you give her a horrified stare, she quickly adds, "I know you don't like our medicine! I get it! You're just gonna have to suck it up, though. I can and will restrain you again if you don't do this peacefully."

You can feel a little part of you shrivel up and die as you sit back down in the chair, allowing Brooks to approach you with his horrible, blasphemous medicine. He dips what looks like a tiny scrap of cloth into a clear bottle, then presses the damp cloth against the scrape on your arm. You hiss and pull away.

"Don't be such a coward," Brooks says, dabbing at you again.

You hold still and let him, your teeth clenched. "It's  _cold_ ," you growl.

The next half hour is extremely uncomfortable. He cleans your wounds and dabs some weird liquid onto them that looks exactly the same as the first one, except this one's worse. It stings like a bastard, and by the time he's done checking you over and declaring that you're done you're burning with fury and shame.

God, you are such a fucking failure. First you get captured, then they make you change out of your armor  _in front of them_ , then they put all that horrible medicine all over you and hoooly shit that's a needle.

"What the fuck is that for?!" you say, your voice quite a bit higher than you'd intended.

"We're moving you to a new cell," Peixes explains, "One that actually has a bed in it. I still don't think this sedation is really necessary, Brooks," she adds over her shoulder.

"You've never dealt with Legion soldiers before," Brooks replies. He jabs the needle into a bottle. "Trust me, this is for his own good. You have no idea how desperate these guys will get when they're caught."

You can't deny that.

"Besides," Brooks adds, "He needs rest, and this should knock him out for a good ten hours or so."

Peixes sighs and motions for Brooks to go over to you. You glare at him as he preps your arm, but you don't struggle. You remember what Peixes had said before. You'd rather not die from being shot by some NCR bastard.

You put on your most badass and stoic face as the needle jabs into the crook of your elbow. You try not to let on how hard your heart is pounding as you feel the foreign liquid get injected into your veins. Brooks steps back and begins to clean up, and Peixes gives you a sympathetic look. You curl your lip at her.

"I fuckin hate you," you say, "Seriously, fuck you all. So much. You ain't gettin shit outta me an when Caesar takes Hoover Dam he's gonna kill all a you fuckin pieces a shit."

Your tongue stumbles a little on that last bit. You blink, hard, as your vision fuzzes over. That shouldn't happen. You have your glasses on. Shit, the sedative. The fuck is even in that stuff, it's hitting you way harder than you'd expected.

"C'mon, up you get," Peixes says. You just blink at her. It's getting harder to be angry, all of a sudden. Now you're mostly just tired.

Still, you muster the effort to keep talking. "Fuck you. An your fuckin goggles. I ain't gonna forgive you for this just 'cause you're pretty. You're real pretty but you're NC... you're NCR an you're an asshole."

You're slurring to a somewhat ridiculous degree by the end of that, but you don't really care. Your rambling peters out to unintelligible mumbling as you stare vaguely at Brooks and Peixes moving around the room.

A pair of arms are hoisting you up, but you don't really feel like walking. You hear someone talking as your legs are lifted as well, heh, you're being carried bridal style, that's funny. That someone is still talking but you can't work out what they're saying. Sleep sounds real fucking good right about now, and when darkness threatens to envelop you, you let it.

 

_You dream._

_In the dream, you are five years old. You're sitting on Daddy's lap, staring at the pictures in the book he is reading. They're drawings of big bright cities and happy families surrounded by more green than you've ever seen in your life, and there are dogs and other animals you don't even know the names for in the pictures, too. You like this book. It's a story book, and it's your favorite. Some of the pages are crumbling around the edges and the binding is wobbly, but you don't care. You stare at the pictures in wonder as Daddy tells the story to you, though you don't really need to listen to what he says. You have the book memorized at this point._

_"Daddy?"_

_"What, Eri?"_

_"How come everythin's not all brown in the pictures? It's brown outside."_

_Daddy gives you a look you can't quite put a name to. It's not the I'm Proud of You look or the I'm Disappointed in You look, or even the Your Brother Did Something Stupid Again look. You wonder if what you said was making Daddy sad. You hope not._

_"Well, son," Daddy says slowly, "The world used to be like in the pictures. There were plants everywhere, not just the small ones we farm around here. There were a lot of animals, too. Animals that aren't around anymore."_

_"Why?" you ask._

_Daddy sighs. "How do I explain this... One day, something very bad happened to the world. A lot of things died, but some survived. Life's kind of stubborn that way. The world was never the same, though. Some scars never heal."_

_"Like your face," you say, helpfully._

_Daddy smiles at that. You don't see what's so funny. "My scars are a bit different, Eri. What happened to the world changed it forever. People messed up, and almost everything was lost. But," he says quickly, seeing the somewhat fearful look on your face, "Some people survived. And some of their descendants are trying to fix the world, or at least make something new, something good out of it. It can't go back to the way it was before, but it can be made better."_

_You nod slowly. A lot of what Daddy said went right over your head, but you're awed nonetheless. "Can we help?" you ask._

_Daddy smiles again, but bigger this time. "Maybe when you've grown a bit."_

_You pout, but you don't argue. Daddy knows lots of stuff, and you know that when he says you need to wait 'till you're older, he means it. No matter what Cro says. Your brother can be so dumb, thinking he knows everything just because he's thirteen and you're five. Daddy knows way more than Cro does._

_"Now go on," Daddy says, hoisting you off his lap, "Go see what your mother's up to. Daddy needs to rest for a little bit."_

_"'kay," you say._

_You leave Daddy alone in the living room, deciding to ask mom if she knows where Nap is. That dog is so hard to find sometimes. As you trot off towards Mommy's study, which really is little more than a room with a sparsely-filled bookshelf and a chair in it, you decide right then and there that you're gonna fix the world as soon as you grow up. You want to make it like it looked in the pictures._

_You want to make it beautiful again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I enjoy this crossover way too much.


	3. Chapter 3

Your name is Sollux Captor and you think this is a horrible idea. When Karkat returned to your tent last night and told you and Kanaya about Officer Peixes' orders, you'd thought he was joking. Trying to "rehabilitate" a  _legionary_? Even Kanaya had been incredulous, and it had taken some convincing for you both to realize that Karkat was dead serious. He was quick to add that he thought it was idiotic, too, but Peixes seemed really invested in this, and Colonel Hsu had approved of it--or at least allowed it to happen--so it probably isn't completely unreasonable.

The three of you had argued over what to do for a while after that. Karkat had been for the idea, though you suspect that he's just glad to have something he can do while waiting for his arm to heal. Kanaya had been impartial, saying that while she was not very optimistic about how successful they might be, she admitted that it would at least be interesting to try. You, on the other hand, had firmly stated that this whole thing was fucking stupid and that you wanted no part in it. There was no way you'd be playing babysitter for some bigoted, delusional, wannabe-Roman asshole.

So of course when you find yourself sitting in the lobby of the terminal building the next morning, you're pretty pissed.

You're sitting with Kanaya and Karkat behind the little wall of sandbags at the entrance, having pulled three of the scattered chairs over to wait for Peixes to show up. You'd originally expected to go straight to her office and get this bullshit over with, but apparently she had something else to do first. Some lieutenant whose name you couldn't be bothered to remember had been waiting for you and told you to stay here. He'd left before you actually got to ask how long you could expect this to take.

Karkat and Kanaya are talking about something, but you tuned out a while ago and are currently fidgeting around in your chair, staring absently at the god-knows-how-old warplane hanging from the ceiling. You can't find a comfortable way to sit. You and Kanaya are already wearing your standard, doing-drills-and-other-assorted-shit-at-the-base NCR armor. Normally it isn't too bad, in fact it's rather light an unobtrusive, but when one is stuck waiting in a place they really don't want to be at for a person to give them an assignment they really don't want to do, one tends to notice every single goddamn annoying thing about their uniform. The way the fingerless leather gloves make your hands way sweater than they have any right to be, how stupidly heavy your boots are compared to the rest of your clothes, the itch on your left shoulder that you can't scratch because of your thick leather pauldrons, how your breeches are just loose enough to be noticeable, and that fucking thick cloth wrap draped around your neck. It's supposed to be for protection in the desert, but you have no idea why you have to wear it right now because you're not even  _doing_ anything.

You try to readjust yourself and get at least somewhat comfortable, mentally complaining at length about every tiny last detail of your uniform and noting exactly why they're all terrible, before you just give up and slump back, hating yourself, your life, and just the world in general. You especially hate Karkat for getting to wear civilian clothes around the base because of that fucking cut on his arm. Not to mention the fact that you haven't taken your meds today, so you've got the start of a really fucking awful headache brewing in you skull. You'll just have to take them when you get this nonsense over with; taking them later in the day won't stop the headache, but it'll at least keep your other problem at bay. The one you don't talk about. Ever. To anyone. But that doesn't matter right now, what matters is that you are furious at Karkat for dragging you all the way out here so early in the morning. You know you're being kind of a bitch about this, but quite frankly you don't give a shit at the moment. You had things to do today, and none of them included this.

"I can't believe we're actually doing this," you mutter not-so-subtly as you slouch even further into your half-rotten, two-century-old excuse for a chair.

"Captor, can you not break out the I Hate The Entire World routine at six thirty in the fucking morning? 'Cause that got old about ten minutes after I met you," Karkat snaps. "Just be wait quietly for once in your life, will you?" He's one to talk. He looks just as impatient as you feel and has been bouncing his leg in a way that's driving you fucking nuts. You get that he's probably eager to get to work on something and take his mind off the fact that he's out of commission for the next week, but holy shit it's only been a  _day_.

"I have a million other things I could be doing right now," you say, glaring at him, "You know, stuff that's actually  _important_."

"Officer Peixes probably won't keep the two of us here for too long, Sollux," Kanaya says, "She's most likely going to debrief us, and then send us on our way and have Karkat remain here."

That's... actually a good point, but you're still not happy about it. "Great. Then we get to spend God knows how long babysitting that fucker. What does Peixes even expect us to  _do_?"

"I must admit, if she wants us to speak to him like we did yesterday, then I'm afraid we aren't going to accomplish much," Kanaya says.

"The hell did you guys talk to him about, anyway?" Karkat asks, "You both were in there way longer than me, but I'm apparently the only one that actually got any information out of him. Though I  _did_ hear him yelling at you, Captor."

That makes you snort out a laugh. "I don't even know what the fuck that was. The asshole barely said anything for pretty much the entire time I was in there, I might as well have been talking to myself, and all of a sudden he just fucking explodes. Shit was hilarious."

Kanaya purses her lips. "I don't think Officer Peixes would approve of you antagonizing the prisoner. That seems counterproductive."

You wave a hand dismissively. "Who cares? He's an asshole. Everyone in the Legion is an asshole. You would've been laughing too if you heard some of the shit he was yelling at me."

"Do I even want to know?" Karkat says.

"It was pretty much total bullshit like 'Caesar is the best person in the entire world, blah blah blah, you should be crucified for the blasphemous drivel you're spewing, blah, hearing you talk Old World tech is making me want to strangle you, et cetera."

"Wait, you talking  _computers_ with him?" Karkat says, "No fucking wonder he blew up. I would too, you get nigh incomprehensible when you start that shit."

"I'll take that as a compliment," you say, "Anyway, I was kind of running out of things to say at that point. Figures that the only time I was able to get more than two words out of the guy was when I was just saying random shit about my job. And before you say anything about that being dangerous," you say hurriedly as Kanaya opens her mouth, "I didn't tell him anything important. Just stuff like all the shit I have to do to try and get those ancient-ass computers to not blow up on me."

"Knowing you, it was probably a step-by-step recount of every tiny last thing you do to get those shitty things running," Karkat says.

You grin. "It was."

"God, you're an asshole," Karkat says.

"I am."

Kanaya sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose between her fingers. "Again, I highly doubt deliberately getting our prisoner riled up is going to help us, Sollux."

"What, like you accomplished more than I did," you scoff, "What did you try to do? Be nice to him? If that shit worked on those guys, we would've won this war ages ago."

"I admit that my conversation with him was... unproductive," Kanaya says, "He seemed to have no interest in speaking with me, and when I pressed him, all he would say was that I wasn't 'worthy' to speak to him, and that he didn't want to waste his time. He seemed to dislike me for a reason that I'm completely unaware of."

"What, you mean more than he hates the rest of us?" Karkat says.

"How do I put this...? It was almost as if he was  _offended_ that I was speaking to him. I had seen the way he'd looked at you two, albeit briefly, and while he had certainly been hostile towards you, the way he'd been glaring at me was... different. I actually am at a loss for words trying to describe it."

You frown. "Wait, doesn't the Legion have that weird thing about women?"

Kanaya furrows her brows, while Karkat looks somewhat confused. "I had heard rumors," Kanaya replies, "Though I hadn't wanted to believe them."

"What thing about women?" Karkat asks, "How come you two know about this and I don't?"

"Cool your tits, KK," you say, "It's just something I overheard one of the other tech guys saying once. And KN's been around longer than us. Have you seriously not seen the NCR posters plastered all over the place?"

"You're gonna have to be more specific than that," Karkat says dryly, "There are so many different fucking posters I stopped paying attention to them the day after I got here."

You roll your eyes. "KN, you know the poster I'm talking about, right? The one that's like, 'women of the NCR, every one of you that serves is a slap across Caesar's face,' or something."

"Yes, I've seen those," Kanaya says, "I hadn't really asked anyone about what those meant. I suppose I had been too worried as to their implications."

"Shit, are you guys saying the Legion's fucking sexist, too?" Karkat says, looking disgusted, "They just get worse the more I hear about them."

"Yeah, from what I heard, Caesar teaches all of his little minions that women are fucking subhuman, or something equally shitty. They're not allowed to fight, and are used as nurses, or workers, or--ugh--breeders."

"Dear God," Karkat mutters in a horrified little voice.

"I had heard of this," Kanaya says thoughtfully, "But, as I said, I had dismissed those as rumors. But it would explain the way he was acting towards me."

"He wasn't looking at Peixes like that," Karkat says, "What gives?"

You smirk. "Did you see the faces he was making at her? Seeing a high-ranking woman in the military probably fried a few circuits in his brain and made him forget that he wasn't supposed to act like she's the same fucking species he is. Plus, she doesn't look half bad, so that helps."

 "Are you implying that I'm unattractive?" Kanaya says, quirking an eyebrow.

"No, no, shit, that's not what I meant," you say quickly, "Fuck no, you're hot as hell, I just meant that you--" Your hurried explanation is abruptly cut off as both Kanaya and Karkat burst out laughing. Fuck. You hunch a little into yourself, your face burning with embarrassment at what you just said.

Of course that's the moment Officer Peixes chooses to finally show up, walking in on you all sitting there and acting like fucking morons. It's you that notices her first as she pauses in front of the hallway she just left, her arms crossed as she looks at you three with an amused grin. You elbow Kanaya, who looks up, freezes, and nudges Karkat. Your surprised stares make Peixes smile even wider, and she's still grinning as she crosses the room and joins you. Seeing someone smile that much usually kind of freaks you out, but with her, it doesn't. Her smile is kind of nice, you decide.

"I hope I'm not interrupting something," she says. There's no annoyance or anger in her voice. How is it possible for someone to be this happy and friendly all the time? Each time you've seen this woman you've found yourself stunned by her sheer liveliness, and you're not sure yet whether that's a good or bad thing.

"O-oh, no, ma'am," Kanaya says as the three of you stand up and give her quick, flustered salutes, "We were just, ah, discussing the prisoner, ma'am."

"At ease," Peixes says, "Like I said to Karkat, there's no need to be all formal with me! We're all friends here, right? Call me Feferi."

"Uh, yes," Kanaya says, "Of course."

"It's good that you guys were already talking about our little guest," Feferi goes on, "'Cause now we can get straight to the point! Come with me, we'll talk on the way there."

She walks off without waiting for a reply. You all glance at each other, then hurry off after her. As you walk past the escalator leading to the second floor, you hear Karkat clear his throat behind you.

"Uh, Feferi," he says, "Isn't the prison up there?"

"Yep! But I figured keeping Mr. Ampora in an empty little square of a cell wouldn't be all that comfortable for him, so I set up one of the spare rooms in the emptier parts of the terminal for him to stay in."

"What?" you say, "Hold on, FF--wait, shit,  _Feferi_ \--" You begin to mentally scold yourself for abbreviating her name automatically when she's your goddamn superior officer, but she cuts that train of thought off abruptly. 

"Oh my gosh, you gave me a  _nickname_! That's so  _cute_!" She shoots another grin over her shoulder, "And I know you're probably worried about how safe this all is. Carrie--whoops, I mean Lieutenant Boyd, have you met her?--was worried about the same thing! She said to me, 'Peixes, I don't care if Hsu said it was alright, I'm the person in charge of prisoner interrogation, and I don't think keeping him in such a remote and unprotected part of the base is a good idea.' I told her that I'd set everything up already and even showed her, and that made her kind of mad at first about not being told about this, which is understandable, but when I demonstrated the way I had the room reinforced and wired up to our security network, she came around! She was even considering making that whole unused part of the base into a sort of high-security prison block, isn't that awesome? Oh shit, I'm rambling again! I'm so sorry, I tend to do that when I get excited!"

By the time she (finally) pauses, you're pretty sure you've crossed into the emptier part of the terminal. "Uh, it's fine," you say, a bit overwhelmed by her exuberance. You can tell Karkat and Kanaya are, too. "How did you get this all set up so fast? We only caught the guy yesterday."

"I've been planning this for a while," Feferi replies, sounding proud of herself, "Why do you think we had him caught instead of killed on sight? I've had some of our more experienced soldiers keeping an eye out for lone Legion soldiers just like him for almost two months, and I was almost starting to consider giving up when they found him! Ah, here we are!"

You've stopped in front of a dilapidated old door. The paint has long since peeled away and the hinges are so rusty that the door doesn't so much as creak when Feferi opens it as it does scream. It opens into a long hallway that looks a lot less neglected than the last few rooms and halls you've seen did, but that isn't really saying much. Heavy steel doors are lined up along the hall, four on either side, and they all look startlingly new compared to everything else. Next to each door is a glass pane, most of which are shattered, cracked, and/or completely filthy, save one on the end. The window on that one has been gutted entirely and replaced with thick, sturdy-looking bars. Two armed guards are standing on either side of that particular door, and they look up and nod as Feferi ushers you all inside.

"I think these used to be offices, way back when," Feferi explains as she leads you all towards the door on the end, "They were all in really rough shape when I started working on them, but after a bit of work we got them all cleared out and fixed up! The doors were the hardest part, we had to haul them all the way down here and get them fitted in, but they're a hell of a lot better than the rotten old things that were here before!"

"How did you accomplish all of this without word getting around?" Kanaya asks, "A project this large would at least have gotten word to us. I'm surprised we didn't even hear rumors regarding this."

"Hired workers," Feferi replies, "Once the heaviest work was done, I paid them all off and sent them on their way. They were staying in Freeside, I think, which is why you didn't really see them around much. The last bits of work that we haven't quite gotten done yet are being done by some of our guys, and I didn't give them any orders to keep this quiet. They're just not a talkative bunch. Hello, gentlemen," she says brightly at the guards, who both salute, "Go wait at the end of the hall, please. This will only take a minute."

The guards nod and walk off towards the entrance. Turning to face you all, Feferi continues. "There's still a lot of work to be done, but we managed to get one cell ready in time for Mr. Ampora here."

"He's in there?" Karkat says, craning his neck to get a glimpse through the bars.

"Yep! I'll get to him in a moment, right now I want to say something to Sollux and Kanaya here. You two," she says, "I know this assignment might seem a bit 'out there' to you both, Lord knows everyone else involved has their reservations, but rest assured I would only call you down here if I truly believe that you both can help. Now, for the first week you two are to carry on work as usual while Karkat here works with Mr. Ampora. What happens next will mostly depend on how much progress Karkat is able to make with him, but the next few weeks after that you all will work in shifts."

"What is it we are expected to do?" Kanaya asks.

"Rehabilitate him," Feferi replies, "Talk to him, get him to open up. It might be slow going, but I just  _know_ that it's possible. I'll be able to give you both more detailed instructions after Karkat is given his week with him. Now, don't breathe a  _word_ of what exactly happens here to anyone else unless I say you can. If anyone asks, tell them I'm having you work with the prisoner, nothing more. No details. I'm trusting you all with this because you're new, plus we did thorough background checks, so I can be sure you're not frumentarii. Same goes for the guards assigned here."

"Frumen-what?" Karkat asks.

"Legion spies," Kanaya clarifies.

"Oh shit," you say, "FF, do you think there are frumenwhatsits in our base?"

"It's a possibility," Feferi replies, "Don't worry about it. Hsu just wants us to keep this operation secure. So keep your mouths shut, got it?"

"Yes, ma'am," you and Kanaya say in unison.

"Karkat, you can discuss what happens here with them only in secure locations, such as here or in my office. Nowhere else. Understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," Karkat says.

"Good!" Feferi says, grinning, "Now, Sollux and Kanaya, I'm sure you've both got stuff to do, so I'll let you on your way. Just let the guards up there know where you're going, and one of them will escort you out. It's not that I don't trust you, I just don't want you to get lost."

You and Kanaya salute, and you feel a rush of relief at getting that shit over with. You're glad you didn't have to speak with the prisoner again, and maybe now you can get some actual work done. You and Kanaya are already turning to leave when you feel a hand on your shoulder. That's freakout trigger number one in your book, but you manage to keep yourself calm as you jerk out of their grasp and look over your shoulder. Feferi is standing there, smiling warmly at you.

"I know you don't like this, Sollux," she says, and for some reason you don't find her tone patronizing when normally anyone speaking to you like this would instantly piss you off, "But it means a lot to me that you're helping. This project could end up helping so many people, and I need all the hands I can get."

"Uh, you're welcome," you say, not sure how else to respond, "I'll just... get going, then."

"Alright! See you later!" Feferi says, beaming.

You sure as hell don't flee as you hurry to where Kanaya is waiting for you at the end of the hall, but you are eager to get out of there. Feferi's words are making you feel something you can't quite identify, and it's hard to tell if you like it or not. All you want to do right now is sit down in front of a computer and get to work.

You can feel Feferi's eyes on your back as you leave.

\---

 "So, Karkat!" Peixes says as soon as the others are gone, "Time for you to get started!"

"Uh, alright," you say, "What, exactly, am I supposed to do?"

"Not much right now," Peixes admits, "He's kind of... out of it at the moment."

"What?"

"Well, to ensure he doesn't hurt himself or try to escape, he needs to be kept sedated. Just for a little while!" Peixes says quickly when she sees the look on your face, "When he's more stable, we'll be able to stop dosing him. Trust me, I don't like it either, but he's the only legionary we've managed to get and we can't afford to lose him. It's either this or keeping him restrained all the time, which I also don't want to do. I think that if you talk to him for a bit, just sort of spend time with him, we'll be able to take him off them safely."

"This is fucked up," you mutter. No wonder he hadn't been making any noise in there. "So I'm supposed to just sit in there with a semiconscious lump all day?"

"I'll have someone bring down some books, as well as your meals," Peixes says, just as bubbly as ever, "And there's a bathroom right across the hall, see it?"

Sure enough, there's an old, run-down door halfway down the hall. You hope to God that the plumbing in there works.

"I had someone fix the pipes," Peixes says, answering your silent question, "Thankfully we were able to access them from the basement. Well, I'll leave you to it!"

"Wait, you're leaving?"

"I have other jobs to do," Peixes says apologetically, "He should be awake now, though. Sort of. Anders is gonna get back over here and guard you two in a moment, and Johnson's gonna join him when he's done escorting your friends. Look at it this way: it's slightly less boring than sitting around your tent doing nothing, right?"

"You have a point there," you mutter. Stupid Past You and your stupid fucking arm.

"Then get on in there!" Peixes says. Without further ado, she wrenches open the heavy steel door, the mechanisms sliding into place as she heaves it open with a strength you wouldn't have guessed that she had. Peixes ushers you inside, wishes you a quick good luck, then shuts the door behind you. You hear the locks sliding shut and you realize, too late, that you just got trapped in here.

"Just tell Anders if you need to leave for anything!" Peixes says, her voice already fading as she leaves. You hear the sound of footsteps as the guard, Anders, returns to his post next to the door, but he says nothing.

You scowl, then look around the cell. It's surprisingly large, though you suppose you can attribute that to the complete lack of any furniture, save for a small chair and a flat bed jutting from the wall. On the bed, curled into a little ball and with his back to you, is the Legion bastard that you're in charge of babysitting for a week. His armor is gone (good thing too, that pseudo-Roman shit looked idiotic) and instead he's wearing simple clothes that look like they've seen better days. You wonder if you could ask for him to get some better clothes, then silently ask yourself why the fuck you'd do that, he's just some Legion asshole. Sighing, you walk over to the chair and sit down heavily, resigning yourself to a really goddamn boring week.

A sudden moan from the pathetic little bed startles you. Ampora shifts slightly, slowly rolling onto his back. From this angle you can get a pretty good look at his face, and you raise your eyebrows. Man, Peixes wasn't joking about him being out of it. His pupils are huge; you can barely see any of his purple (seriously what the hell) irises around those dilated black pools. His weird-ass hair is disheveled and sticking out in places, and a small part of you wonders when the last time he bathed was. You can see a cracked pair of thick-framed glasses lying on the floor beneath the bed. How well can he see? Would he even recognize you, considering the state he's in?

Apparently not, for a few moments later he flops over onto his other side, facing you, and props himself onto his elbow. He looks around blearily and those unfocused eyes eventually find you, and you see no recognition in that gaze.

Sure enough, he mumbles, "Who... th' fuck're you?"

You can't help but smile a little. Okay, this is kind of funny. "Karkat Vantas. Remember me? I tried to talk some sense into you yesterday."

He continues to squint at you for a moment. "Yer... yer th' NCR guy," he slurs, "Proh... Profleggat."

"I'm sorry, what? I don't speak Really High Douchewad," you say.

"Profleggat," he says again, waving one hand, "Don't follow Caezzer... yer'n en'my. Profleggat."

"Oh yeah, isn't that what you guys call people that fight back against you? Profligates?" you say.

He nods. "Yeah... yeah."

"Man, you are high as a kite," you observe.

He just blinks at you, his brow furrowed. "'S th' nurse," he says, "Gave me th' med'cine shit."

"I can tell," you say.

You both fall silent for a long while, during which you ponder your life choices that led you to this moment, and he mumbles incoherently under his breath and stares at nothing.

"Kar," he says suddenly.

"What?"

"Kar," he insists, "'S you. Yer name's Karkat. 'M gonna call ya Kar. 'S easy."

You snort. "Sure, Ampora. Going for the nicknames already, just like Sollux."

"Sollks?"

"Lispy guy with red and blue glasses? Acts like an asshole?"

"Oh. Yeah. 'S an asshole," Ampora says, "Ev'ryone in NCR's 'n asshole."

"Can't argue with that," you reply. You wonder how aware of himself this guy is. Just what the hell did those guys even give him?

You're suddenly reminded of that time, all those years ago, when you'd tagged along after your brother during one of his jobs. Kankri Vantas was (and is, you suppose) always hell-bent on helping others, and he'd joined the Followers of the Apocalypse the second their father had deemed him old enough to leave the house. He'd always spend a few days with the Followers, then come home for a bit to help out there, then head right back out to help the poor and disadvantaged people in the Wasteland. You'd considered Kankri to be a naive little prick with his mind set on a goal that was so lofty that no one in their right mind would ever try to achieve it. You had the same opinion of the Followers, to be honest. Trying to help people by going around and teaching them how to farm, handing out medicine, and helping addicts as if such little things will accomplish anything. The NCR was at least unifying people. The Followers, while never seeking power and merely cleaning up other people's messes, were anarchists, and many a family meal had been spent with you and Kankri arguing over the effectiveness of the Followers' actions, while your father desperately tried to keep the peace.

Your opinion had been somewhat changed after Kankri finally convinced you to come with him and watch as he did his little good Samaritan routine. When you'd walked into the encampment where Kankri worked then, you had been shocked. You had spent most of your life in the city, and as the son of a preacher, you had been pretty well off, and had never really seen much of the Wastes beyond your city. The camp had been littered with the sick and injured, and all around doctors were hurrying back and forth, moving from one patient to the next. Kankri had immediately headed to one of the larger tents, and you'd hastened after him. Inside there were only a few people, but they all looked terribly sick. You had stared, wide-eyed, until Kankri had chastised you for staring impolitely and asked you to fetch him some supplies.

The rest of the time you spent with your brother there had been uncomfortable. You had never done well around the sick and injured, and you'd felt awkward as fuck just standing there while your brother worked. What you remember most about those few days was when Kankri had sat down with an old man, an alcoholic, one of the nearby doctors had explained to you. Gone was the snobby, preachy older brother you were familiar with. In his place was someone that was almost like a complete stranger. He'd squatted down next to the man, leveling himself with him, and had placed a hand on one bony shoulder, giving him a look of compassion that you'd never seen him give anyone before, ever.

Kankri had addressed the man by name and had softly asked him what was wrong, and the man had confessed that he had fallen off the wagon and was looking for help. You hadn't seen the point in helping the guy, he looked like he could drop dead any minute now, but Kankri had calmly spent God knows how long helping that man, all the time acting calm and soothing and like this guy was an old friend instead of just a patient. After getting that man sorted out and settled into a bed, Kankri had gone right to his next patient. You paid extra close attention to how he acted the rest of your time there, and you'd been shocked to see the sheer compassion he had shown to each and every one of the people he treated.

All of the Followers there had. You remember feeling helpless there, surrounded by people that were injured, sick, or dying, and with doctors all around you that were going from one patient to the next, diligently helping each one with what few supplies they had. When you and Kankri had finally returned home, your brother had been exhausted, but somehow looking alive in a way you had never really associated with him. Of course, the minute you came home he was just as insufferable and douchey as ever, but you could never get the image of him beside the alcoholic man out of your mind. He had been so in his element there, and you had felt so helpless.

You feel the same way now, watching Ampora lying on his bed, his eyes half-closed and glazed over. How the fuck does Peixes expect you to help him? You can barely keep yourself together most of the time! Vaguely, you wonder what Kankri would do. It's not like he's back at the Core, after all. When you'd been sent on tour in the Mojave, he'd been eager to come with you, saying that there was an established group of Followers there. The little band of Followers, your snobby brother included, had been welcomed in your particular group of soldiers heading East, and he'd accompanied you all the way to Camp McCarran, after which he'd gone off with the rest of the Followers, saying there was a sort of camp set up in an old Mormon fort in Freeside. You had silently prayed for the doctors at that fort, hoping they'd be able to stand Kankri's nonstop talking.

It takes you a moment to realize what the dull ache in your chest is. You miss your brother. He's an asshole, but then, so are you. He's the only family you have out here, and he's not even that far, but you still miss him. He's out there helping people in Freeside, but you're sitting here, babysitting a Legion soldier and feeling just as lost as you did all those years ago. You sigh and lean forwards, cupping your chin in a hand.

Ampora, you realize, has been squinting at you again. You stare back at him. "What?" you ask, sharper than you'd meant to.

He blinks. "Nothin," he mutters, "Ya jus' got quiet."

"I was thinking about my brother," you reply.

He goes silent at that. After several long moments, he finally responds, "Y' had a brother."

"Have," you correct, "He's still alive. He's a Follower of the Apocalypse."

Ampora barks out a laugh at that, startling you slightly. "Foll'ers 're stupid. Tryna fix people that're jus' gonna be a waste'a space."

"You mentioned you had brother, right?" you say, changing the subject. No Legion asshole gets to call your brother stupid.

"Yeah," he slurs, "He fuckin... ran. Lef' me. Asked 'f I wanned'ta come, I was scared. I was _fuckin scared_ , _'_ n Cro fuckin _lef' me_ 'n I," his eyes are starting to shine with tears, making you sit up straighter with alarm, "I...  _I was scared_." He looks up at you, and you see a tear spill over his cheek. His face looks like it's about to crumple and he's gonna really start sobbing any minute now. "Why'd he fuckin leave? I... he  _lef'_ me 'n I  _miss_ him 'n--"

You decide it's time to intervene. You stand up and cross the room in a couple of strides, shoving Ampora over a little to make room for yourself to sit down next to him. He stares up at you, more tears threatening to fall, and he looks like he can't decide whether to cry or to be angry about being pushed. He is so out of it, goddamn.

"Wh... wha...?"

"Shh," you say as you pat his back awkwardly. You have no idea what the fuck you're doing. "It's okay. I know he... I know he left you, but that's in the past, right? So, uh... It's okay. Shh." You pause, then add, "I miss my brother, too."

He goes still, staring up at you with those huge, dilated eyes. Some more tears fall, but thankfully you seemed to have nipped the crying in the bud. "Wha's his name?" he says, finally. 

"Hmm?"

"Yer brother. Wha's his name?" he says.

"Kankri," you reply.

He sniffles and wipes his nose with the back of one sluggish hand. "Mine'as... his name's Cro... Cronus. Was. Is. I don' fuckin know. Migh' be dead. 'S gone now."

You pat him again. Your heart is aching with something that you're terrified might actually be pity for Ampora. Somehow, you have the feeling that his brother leaving him to the Legion is one of the least fucked-up things you're gonna learn about him.

You just hope this crying and comforting shit isn't a regular thing with you two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm probably going to go back and do a lot of revising on these chapters later. No major changes, just altering the wording and putting in some additional information here and there. Mostly because I tend to write in one big rush and post it, then come back later and realize there's some stuff that could use fixing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy, this is gonna be a long fic, isn't it.

_You watch, burning with jealousy as Cro holds out his arm, showing off his new Pip-Boy. Well, not "new," per se. It was Dad's, up until about an hour ago. Your parents had gotten the village's doctor to surgically remove the device from your dad's arm just so Cro could have it. It still freaks you out a little that Dad had spent most of his life with that thing pretty much fused to his flesh, though you suppose it does explain why you'd never seen any of the adults in the village take theirs off. Thankfully, the doctor, with the help of another resident that has considerable technical skill, had been able to remove it and transfer ownership to Cro, while still keeping it fully functional._

_Dad is sitting on the threadbare couch, watching Cro look over and admire the Pip-Boy with an amused look on his face. His arm is bandaged from elbow to wrist, and you can see a few red stains where blood has begun to seep through the fabric. Nap is sitting beside him and sniffing the wound anxiously._

_"It's alright, Napoleon," Dad says, giving the dog a reassuring scratch behind the ears with his good hand. "Poor guy, you just can't help but fuss over me, can you? I'm gonna be fine, Nap."_

_At the sound of his nickname, Nap looks up at your dad with the most worried expression you've ever seen on a dog. He gives his tail one stiff, nervous wag and shifts slightly closer to your dad, whining at him as if to say "get better_  right now. _"_ _He's practically leaning on Dad at this point._

_Cro snorts. "He's such a wuss. Outta all the dogs we coulda ended up with, we had to get the wimpy one."_

_You instantly open your mouth to defend Nap, because your dog is not a wimp_ or  _a wuss, thank you very much, but Mom beats you to it._

_"If I remember correctly," she says, "You didn't complain when Napoleon was constantly trying to reassure you that time you broke your arm."_

_Cro's face flushes. "I was seven," he says emphatically, "'Sides, what're we standing around and talking about our dumb dog for? It's my birthday, y'know." You roll your eyes. Being a year older hasn't done anything to make your brother any less whiny._

_"Of course," Mom says, looking like she's trying very hard not to laugh at Cro's very blatant attempt to redirect all attention to him, "Why don't you test your Pip-Boy out a little? See if it's working right."_

_Your brother's eyes widen, as if he just remembered that he could actually do stuff with the Pip-Boy besides admiring it. Instantly he holds his arm up to his face and begins to fiddle with the knobs and buttons. He's grinning and staring at the screen with a look of total joy and fascination that you haven't seen have since he was thirteen, before he'd started (poorly) acting like a suave and aloof cool guy, and you mentally file away his expression to tease him about later._

_"Holy shit," he breathes, "It even has a fucking radio?!"_

_"Language, Cronus," your mom says, but he doesn't seem to notice._

_"That's not all it does," Dad adds, also having apparently not heard Mom, "Check out the Stats button."_

_Cro does as he says, and his eyes somehow widen even more. "How does it know this stuff?" You kind of wish you could see the screen so you'd have some idea as to what he's talking about._

_Dad starts explaining something to him about it measuring vitals and the status of the owner's limbs or whatever, but you tune him out and look up at your mom, tugging on her shirt sleeve._

_"Why don't I have a Pip-Boy?" you ask, more jealous than ever at how Cro's gleefully checking out the device's functions._

_"You're not old enough," Mom replies, "You'll get mine when you turn fifteen, too."_

_You pout. "Why do I have to wait that long? You said everyone got theirs when they turned ten back where you and Dad grew up."_

_"Things were different in the Vault," Mom says, "You'll just have to be patient, love. Now hush."_

_You pout even harder, but your efforts go unnoticed as Cro walks over to Mom and excitedly shows her what's on the screen, apparently forgetting that Mom has her own Pip-Boy and knows it better than he does. So you go over to sit next to your dad, who seems to sense your jealousy and smiles sympathetically._

_"You want one too, eh Eri?" he says, " You just gotta wait till you're bigger. The damn thing would probably fall right off if we gave it to you now."_

_You smile at the mental image that gives you. "I guess so," you say, "Waiting's hard, though."_

_"I know it is," Dad says, "But you'll be surprised with how fast years can go by if you don't worry about all the stuff that's gonna happen, and focus more on what's happening now. You'll be fifteen before you know it, trust me."_

_You're not entirely sure you believe your dad, but having him try to reassure you makes you feel better. By the time Cro comes over to show off his Pip-Boy, your jealousy has faded to white noise in the back of your mind as you let him show you all the awesome stuff it does. Later your family sits down and eats the birthday cake (Mom and Dad had spent months slowly gathering the right ingredients). Cro gets the biggest slice and you get the second biggest, and when you lie down on your little mattress in the room you share with your brother, you're fuller than you've been in a long time and you no longer mind having to wait to get your own Pip-Boy._

_You are seven years old, and even though the world is in ruins, you feel perfectly content._

 

 When you wake up, you instantly regret doing so. Your head is fucking killing you. You are way too aware of how your blood is rushing through your veins, making your head throb with each beat. Your forehead hurts. Your ears hurt. Your temples hurt. Your fucking  _eyes_ hurt, how the hell is that even possible. You squeeze them as tightly shut as you can, trying to will yourself back to sleep, even though you know it's futile.

Dimly, you wonder if you drank too much last night or something. You can't really remember, and your mind feels strangely fuzzy and disconnected. Is this a dream? Wait, no, you were just dreaming, you're not sure what about, but it's probably not important. What's important right now is that your head hurts way too fucking much, it's like you can feel every bone and muscle scraping against each other in a way that is the complete opposite of okay.

Your tongue is dry and thick in your mouth. Water. Water would be nice right now, it'd be fucking fantastic, but your head hurts so much and you kind of want to just lie here forever. Except you can't, can you, you have to get up, there's something you have to do. What was... wait. Shit.  _Shit_. You have a scouting job. Right. Oh  _Fuck_. You're supposed to be gone for days, you have to get to the other side of the Colorado River and scope out the areas around New Vegas, see if the NCR is doing anything but sitting on its ass for once. One of your superiors told you this yesterday, that this is a dangerous one, they're sending you because you're one of the best scouts and you've done this kind of high risk shit before and  _oh shit what if you're late what if they think you're defying orders oh God please no_

That train of thought is enough to send you into a panic, and you force yourself to sit up, ignoring the resulting burst of agony in your head. As you swing your legs over the edge of the bed (wait, don't you sleep in a bedroll?) you hear what sounds like a door being opened somewhere nearby, and someone's talking, but that isn't important. You have to go, you have to get ready to head out, you have a fucking job to do and headache or not you are going to get it  _done_. Once you get your gear on and start moving, you'll feel better.

You slide off the bed and stand up, which turns out to be a really horrible idea because the second you're upright the room tilts alarmingly, and you stumble to one side, trying to correct it, but suddenly you see black spots that bloom and spread and completely engulf your vision, and you feel like you're spinning but at the same time you also feel weirdly floaty, and the next thing you know someone's got their arms around you, holding you upright. The voice is talking again, and you figure it probably belongs to whoever's propping you up like you're a ragdoll. You blink, and blink again, shaking your head in an attempt to clear it. The blackness surrounding you slowly clears away, and you realize you're not in one of the soldier's tents on Fortification Hill. You're in some dingy little room that somehow familiar and yet not, which makes absolutely no sense. What the fuck is going on, why are you...

Oh.

Wait a minute.

You groan as the fragile dam blocking your memories of the past few days breaks, sending them all flooding back at once. You're in Camp fucking McCarran. You fucked up and let your guard down just enough to get yourself captured by the NCR. And somehow the worst thing about this is how weirdly  _nice_ they're being to you, relatively speaking; you'd expected torture, them trying to get information out of you, and then tossing your limp carcass to the side once they were done. The fact that they're not even doing that is making your insides churn with a weird combination of shame, wariness, and resentment. You can't remember just yet why you feel like hell on wheels, and you're not sure you want to, so you just close your eyes and let the vertigo wash over you and  _hurt_.

Whoever is holding you up is saying something again, dragging you back from that dizzying rush of memories. You wish they'd shut up, because they are  _not_ helping your headache in the slightest, but of course they don't. You think they sound kind of familiar, but your brain isn't really up to the task of matching a face or a name with the voice and god dammit they're  _still fucking talking_.

Slowly, their words filter just enough through your consciousness for you to make out what they're saying, which just makes it worse. "...Way heavier than you look," whoever it is says, "Seriously, someone as scrawny as you shouldn't be this hard to hold up."

"Ngh," you grunt, "Shuup." Wow, okay, that came out way less articulate than you intended.

"He lives," the guy (you're pretty sure it's a guy) says, "Hallelujah."

Something in your brain finally clicks, and you realize who this is. "Fuck," you mumble, "You're th' nurse guy."

"Brooks," he clarifies, "And  _you_ need to sit your ass back down. I'd rather not have a Legion prisoner of war puking on me this early in the morning, thanks."

You mutter something along the lines of "fuck you," but then you're being pushed backwards and you flop heavily onto your sad excuse for a bed, just barely stopping yourself from banging your head into the wall. Brooks puts something into your hands, and you blink groggily down at it before realizing it's your glasses. Awesome. You put them on and blink up at the nurse. He's staring at you with his arms crossed and his face unreadable, and you find yourself resenting him even more, albeit somewhat irrationally, at how awake and put together he looks, while you feel like your skull is about to split in two.

"What d'you even want," you say. Why is your tongue not working the way you want it to?

Brooks arches an eyebrow. "You should probably be a bit more polite to the guy that's making sure you don't keel over and die on us."

"Robert!" says another voice that you recognize, and oh great, Peixes is here too. "Don't be mean to the poor guy; he looks like he feels awful."

"Relax," Brooks says, "I'm just fucking with him."

You can see Peixes standing by large barred window to your cell, giving you that sympathetic look again that weirds you out so much. Someone is standing beside her, a familiar-looking guy with messy hair and dark circles under his eyes like he hasn't slept well for weeks. It takes your brain a moment to remember his name. Vantas, right?

You jump as you feel something cold and wet touch your arm. You look over to see Brooks wiping a spot on your skin with a small bit of fabric that's damp with a sharp-smelling liquid, and you feel your blood turn to ice as you see the needle he's got in his other hand. Oh, fuck. Now you remember why your most recent memories are so fuzzy.

"Like hell I'm lettin you use that shit on me again!" you snarl, jerking out of his grasp. Your body seems to have finally woken up a little, thank God.

"Cool your jets," Brooks says calmly, "It's just a bit of Med-X. And you're going to let me use it if you want the pain to go away."

"Chems," you say, "I can't believe I'm stoopin this low. Fine, gimme your fuckin poison. It ain't like I got much of a choice."

You ignore the way Peixes is looking at you like you're an injured dog or something as Brooks wordlessly continues prepping your arm. Chems. Fucking  _chems_. It had barely gotten the chance to sink in, before, but as you feel the painful prick of the needle sliding into your flesh your stomach twists in disgust. You shouldn't be letting them do this. This is beyond humiliating, this is  _heresy_ , you'd rather be fed to the Legion's filthy mutts than let them put this vile stuff in your veins, but even though your insides are roiling with revulsion you can't do shit about what's happening. You're such a fucking failure. You could be crucified by your fellow soldiers right now and you would not mind in the slightest. You'd deserve it.

The effect is almost immediate. You blink hard and shake your head as a sudden numbness comes over you. It fades moments later, leaving you feeling weirdly pain-free compared to how you had been feeling just a minute or two ago. You're still really drowsy and repulsed by what this nurse asshole just gave you, but you can't help but feel slightly relieved at the absence of that horrible, throbbing headache.

"There. He's not going to need the sedative again," Brooks says, looking over at Peixes, "At least not while Vantas is in the cell with him. I doubt he'd be able to do something stupid then. We should probably give him a half-dose at night, though. Just to make sure he sleeps."

"Understood," Peixes says.

"I'm sittin  _right fuckin here_ ," you say furiously. They ignore you.

"You can head on in, Karkat," Peixes says, "And I think you're done here for now, Robert. Thanks again!"

"Sure," Brooks says as the heavy door unlocks and is slowly pushed open by what looks like a guard, "Have Vantas send for me if there's an emergency."

"Will do," Vantas says, entering your cell, "For the record, there shouldn't be one, right?"

"Not unless either of you do anything too idiotic," Brooks says, "How's your arm doing, by the way?"

"Eh, it's not too bad," Vantas replies, "Stubborn as fuck, though."

"It'll be healed before you know it," Peixes says warmly, "Anyway, I'm gonna head out with Robert here. Got things to do and so forth. I'll have Kanaya or Sollux bring over those books I know you like so much once they have a break!"

Vantas' face flushes. "You know about those?!"

"Relax, I think they're cute! Alright, I'll let you get to it! See you later, boys!" It takes you a few moments to realize that Peixes was addressing you as well as Vantas, but by that time she and Brooks have left.

You keep your eyes firmly fixed on the floor, but you can feel Vantas staring at you warily, and it's making you nervous as hell. You have no idea why, he's just some dumb Profligate, but you have the vague sense that there's something about what happened the last time you were awake that you'd rather forget, and you're pretty sure it involves Vantas. You can't remember much more than vague snippets of memory, but you want to hold off on trying to make sense of them just now.

"...Hey," Vantas says awkwardly.

You just sigh, wishing you could be anywhere but here right now. The hell is he even going to do? Just sit here and try to have an awkward, one-sided conversation with you until Peixes comes to fetch him? Sure, you'd been willing to talk to him the first time you'd met, but you had also been convinced that you were going to die soon at the time.

There's an incredibly long and awkward pause.

"...You look like you're feeling better," Vantas says.

You force yourself to look up at him, but when your gaze meets his you look away quickly, more uncomfortable than ever. Why the hell are you so nervous around some NCR soldier? It's not like you ever have been before. Granted, all the other times you'd met NCR troops face-to-face you'd been trying to kill them. You wonder if he knows how many of his fellow soldiers you've killed in the past. You think he has some idea.

"Are you just going to ignore me?" Vantas goes on, "'Cause the awkwardness level in this room is kind of increasing exponentially by the second here."

You give up. "I don't even know what that fuckin means," you say, glaring at him.

"That's fucking pathetic," he replies, "It's a math thing, numbnuts. What, do you Legion dickwipes not learn anything other than how to be the biggest tools in the universe?"

"Excuse me for not havin to learn shit like that since I was ten," you retort, "'Sides, learnin that stuff's fuckin pointless. My instructors had priorities."

He rolls his eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure they did."

You both fall silent for another few minutes, during which he looks like he's trying to figure out how to say something and you stare at the ground between your feet, not wanting to meet his brown eyes again, not yet. The way he's looking at you is making you even more nervous. You're not sure you want to try to figure out what his expression means.

Finally, Vantas breaks the silence. "How much do you remember about yesterday?"

Of course he's asking about the topic you want to talk about the least. You look back at him and narrow your eyes. "Bits an pieces," you admit cautiously, "Why?"

He purses his lips. "You were kind of... out of it," he says, "And we talked. About some stuff."

You have a sinking feeling in your stomach as you ask, slowly, "What did I say?" You don't want him to answer. You know that the moment he does, you'll remember, and that is the last thing you want right now.

"Most of it was just you slurring bullshit all over the place," Vantas says, "But there was one part where I mentioned my brother, and you just sort of..." He waves a hand helplessly.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck  _fucking fuck_. You remember that now. You can't recall what you said, exactly, but you remember thinking about Cronus for the first time in years, and then you'd... god dammit. You remember crying like a fucking pathetic, weak piece of shit instead of the seasoned legionary you are, and then Vantas had sat down next to you, and he'd  _comforted_ you. You'd leaned against a fucking NCR soldier and sobbed all over him and let him pat you like you were an upset kid instead of a man in his mid-twenties, and over  _Cronus_ of all things. You didn't think it was possible for you to feel any more mortified, but hey, turns out it is.

"Shit," you moan, putting your face in your hands, "I... fuck, that's embarrassin."

"Yeah, it was awkward as fuck," Vantas says. You hear him move, and you look up, startled, only to see him just sit down in a small chair a few feet away from your bed. "Sounds like you have some serious issues with that brother of yours, dude."

You scowl. "I don't have  _issues_ with him, I haven't even thought about him for years. He was a coward, I wasn't. End a story."

Vantas just gives you another strange look, but before either of you can say anything, the door is shoved open loudly by an unfamiliar man holding a tray of... holy shit, that's  _food_.

"Thanks," Vantas says, getting up and taking the tray from him. The man just nods and leaves, and Vantas glances at you and adds, "That was one of the guards. You're hungry, right?"

"Fuck yes," you say before you can stop yourself.

Amazingly, Vantas laughs, and it doesn't sound like he's mocking you at all. He walks over to you and shoves the tray onto your lap, and you nearly spill the food as you try to get into something resembling a comfortable position to eat in. There isn't much really, just some bread, a bottle of water, some paper napkins, and little bits of some dried fruit you don't recognize, but right now it looks like a fucking feast to you. You pick up the bread and sink your teeth into it as Vantas heads back over to his chair. He watches you while you eat, looking amused at the way you're scarfing down every last bit of food, but you don't care. You hadn't realized how hungry you'd been before, and the way the food is settling into your stomach is fucking  _heavenly._

The tray is empty way sooner than you'd like, but you're feeling more content than you have in days as you put it to the side.

"I'm amazed you didn't choke on that," Vantas says.

"Wow, rude," you say teasingly, "I was practically starvin here, Vantas."

His mouth twitches into a brief ghost of a smile. "You were not. You ate plenty yesterday, I just thought you were inhaling it all because you were having the munchies or something."

"Pretty sure the shit they gave me doesn't do that."

"Yeah, I know," Vantas says, "So you dropped the nickname thing already? That's a shame, it was actually kind of an okay nickname, unlike the shitty ones Captor gives everyone."

You furrow your brows, confused. "Nick...? Oh, wait, I remember that now." Your embarrassment from before is coming back against your will. "Yeah, I used to call everyone shit like that when I was little. Sorry."

He shrugs. "You can call me that if you want."

You blink at him. You hadn't called people shortened versions of their names since... shit, since you began training. You think. It's been a long time, you know that much. Those nicknames were from a time in your life that you left behind a long time ago, and you have no interest in dredging that up again. Still, though, you don't think it'd hurt to make an exception, just this once. Maybe if you get on his good side, you could use that to get favors out of him. Or something. Shit's just tactics. Nothing else.

"Sure," you say, then you pause and add, "Kar." The one-syllable nickname sparks something in the back of your mind, something that digs up feelings you thought you buried a long time ago, and you force that back down immediately. You got rid of those for a reason.

Vantas--no, Karkat, you can call him Karkat in your head, at least--gives you another blink-and-you'll-miss-it smile. "And Captor jokes about me being uptight."

You throw a wad of leftover napkin at him. He throws it back and you both laugh, and you are for a moment thrown off-balance by those emotions you had forced away so well years ago, and this time, they don't fade.

You do your best to ignore them. Maybe if you do that, these weird warm feelings will go away like they always had before. You're a legionary, after all, and he's NCR. You're enemies.

You're just still a bit out of it from the chems, that's all.

This is nothing to worry about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eridan is the world champion at being in denial.
> 
> Stay tuned for more of these two being way too friendly with each other for soldiers from different warring factions.


	5. Chapter 5

Ampora dozes off not long after he finishes eating, and you can't really blame him. The dude looks exhausted as fuck, not to mention Med-X is some strong shit. Still, though, you wish he could've stayed conscious for a little while longer, at least till your books get here. Having someone to talk to would be nice. You briefly consider trying to strike up a conversation with the guards, but you'd rather not wake your little pet legionary up, not to mention that you barely even know those guys' names and they hadn't really shown any interest in being anything other than distantly curt and polite with you.

Over on his small bed-shelf, Ampora snores and mumbles something in his sleep. He's all but drooling, his glasses propped up at an awkward angle as he lies there on his side, using one arm as a pillow while the other dangles off the edge of the bed. Without all the Legion armor on, he looks weirdly... small. That's not quite the right word for it, he has to be six feet tall at least and he's got the fit, slender physique you'd expect from a trained soldier, but somehow he looks  _vulnerable_ as he lies here on that sad little excuse for a bed, wearing threadbare clothes that are slightly too big for him, his hair hanging limply around his face in the way hair only does when it hasn't been washed in a while.

You think about how he'd looked yesterday, high as a kite on whatever chem they'd given him. You think of how he'd clung to you as he sobbed and you tried to calm him. How his eyes had immediately started to water when he began talking about his brother, how quickly you'd managed to stop his crying with only a bit of rubbing his back and shushing him the way your father had done when you were little and upset, how he'd then gripped your shirt in one shaking fist and  _would not let go_ , and how you only managed to coax him off you when the guards had brought in his food.

You think about some of the stuff he'd said, after you'd gotten him calmed down and fed. The way he'd looked at you pleadingly when you went to sit back down on your little chair, and how happy he'd looked when you'd sighed and given in, sitting down beside him again. He hadn't gone back to leaning on you and clinging, thank fuck, but he'd looked so reassured by you being there, grinning at you in that dazed, drugged-out way that was pathetic as hell. You'd wondered when the last time someone had reassured him like that was, and if he'd been so easy to calm because of the chems, or if it was something else, something that made you ache with sympathy to even try to think about.

Most of what he'd said after that hadn't made much sense. He'd stared off into space and rambled and slurred about who knows what, eventually falling asleep slumped up against the wall. He'd looked just as vulnerable and worn then as he does now, and again you feel that sense of helplessness that makes you long for your brother. Kankri's job is dealing with messed-up people like him. You're just a soldier, you have no idea what you're doing, and you feel so in over your head with this it's not even funny.

You sigh and run a hand through your hair. What's bothering you the most is how  _sorry_ you've begun to feel for the bastard. You always knew the Legion was messed up, that was pretty much common knowledge. The sky is blue, water is wet, the Legion is terrifyingly barbaric. You'd have to live under a rock to not know that. But you'd never really thought about  _how_ messed up it is until you'd met Ampora.

Through all the talk you've heard, all the training you've endured, even during that skirmish where you'd so stupidly gotten yourself injured, you always thought of the Legion as a singular force of evil, the legionaries merely being an extension of Caesar much like how bees are just an extension of their hive. You'd never considered the fact that each legionary, each and every one, is  _human_. They're all humans, with their own thoughts and emotions and personalities, and they're all forced to be warriors, they're forced to  _die_ in the name of one man. And from what Ampora said, they think it's normal. They think it's okay. You think about what Ampora had said, about him being ten years old when he'd been taken in and made into a soldier. You think you know why his brother ran away.

You're so lost in your own thoughts that you don't notice the sounds of someone approaching the cell until the locks click open and the heavy door opens with a groan. You jump and look over at the newcomer, relaxing when you see Maryam's familiar face.

Ampora reacts a bit more strongly than you do. He wakes up at once, as if he hadn't just been sleeping soundly for at least an hour. He sits bolt upright and reaches out to one side, as if searching for something that isn't there. Probably the knife he no doubt keeps beside him while he sleeps. He fumbles around next to him for a second, staring around wildly with his glasses hanging off his face, until he seems to realize where he is and relaxes, hurriedly pushing his glasses back up to where they belong.

Maryam looks amused at Ampora's reaction. He just glares pointedly away from her. You feel indignant on Maryam's behalf--fuck the Legion and its sexist bullshit, seriously--but you don't intervene. You'll let Maryam tear Ampora a new one when it's her turn to sit with him.

"Your books, Karkat," Maryam says. Sure enough, she's got a small stack of books in her arms.

You get up and take the books from her, blushing slightly. Thankfully, Maryam doesn't mock you for your taste in literature, as Captor no doubt would. "Thanks," you say.

"Is everything alright here?" Maryam asks.

"Awkward as fuck, but what else is new," you reply.

"Glad to hear it," Maryam says, smiling, "In any case, I'm afraid I must be going now. I have guard duty on the Southern wall; apparently there has been a lot of Fiend activity there lately."

"Yikes," you say, grimacing. Fiends, the practically feral group of raiders that infest the otherwise uninhabited ruins surrounding New Vegas, have been a constant thorn in the NCR's side since long before you got here. They're violent, unpredictable, and completely batshit insane, being almost constantly high on chems. You've heard horror stories of patrols that ran into some of those bastards, and they've been known to attack soldiers guarding Camp McCarran.

"Indeed," Kanaya says, "Well, then, I'll take my leave. I'll see you tonight, Karkat, and I expect we'll see each other again soon, Ampora." With that, she exists, the metal door swinging shut behind her.

You walk back to your seat and put the little stack of books down on the floor. When you sit down and look up, you see Ampora hasn't moved at all, and is still sitting stiffly on his bed, staring quizzically at the door.

"What is it?" you ask.

"What is what?"

"Why are you staring at the door like you've never seen one before?" you say.

"Oh," Ampora says. He ducks his head, and you can't help but be slightly amused at how flustered he looks. "'S nothing. I just... That woman. Maryam. She confuses me, that's all."

You snort. "Of course she does. Man, I can't fucking  _wait_ 'till it's her turn to babysit you."

His brow furrows. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You'll find out," you say, leaving it at that. Ampora opens his mouth to ask more, but instead just closes it and sighs wearily, which you don't really mind. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some reading to catch up on. You can just, I dunno, go back to sleep, or something. I don't really give a shit, so long as you let me read."

Ampora looks like he wants to object, then seems to decide better of it and lies back down on his bed. He folds his glasses up and places them on the ground--maybe you should ask Peixes to bring him a table or something--and then curls up on his side and closes his eyes. He's dozing off by the time you've gotten your favorite book out of the stack and found the place you'd left off, and when you glance up at him a couple chapters in, he looks like he's sound asleep.

Poor bastard.

Eventually, though, you have to take a break from reading, which is a real fucking shame considering the fact that you'd just started to get to the really juicy part. You can't really complain, since you're being interrupted by one of the guards bringing you another tray of food. Lunch, neat. You make a mental note to try and engage the guards in some form of conversation at some point, because this is getting kind of uncomfortable. For now, though, you accept the tray from him with an awkward 'thanks,' trying to hide the way you fumble to find a secure way to grip it. It's way heavier than the breakfast tray, considering it has food for both you and Ampora this time, and when you try to hold it normally pain lances up from your injured arm, forcing you to carry the tray with it propped against one hip. Stupid fucking arm.

You walk over to Ampora's bed and set the tray on the floor beside it. You nudge him gently awake. "Hey," you say as he blinks groggily up at you, "Wake up. Lunchtime."

"Wh... oh. Okay," he mutters, yawning. He sits up slowly and stiffly as you pick up one of the plates, and he just blinks sleepily at it when you shove it onto his lap.

You take the other plate for yourself and sit down in your chair, your mouth already watering by the time you've settled in. It's the usual godawful excuse for food you've been eating every fucking day since you'd arrived at the camp. It's the same gross shit from the sharecropper farms that only barely qualifies as produce, but right now you don't really care. You hadn't noticed how hungry you've been getting, fuck, you must've been reading for hours, and your stomach feels empty enough to make even this little plate of dry, tough "vegetables" look appetizing. At least there's a chunk of some kind of meat, brahmin, maybe, that looks somewhat fresh. You're just glad that whoever is making the meals thought ahead enough to include water to chase it down with.

You pick away slowly at your food, watching Ampora eat and trying not to laugh at the way he's shoveling whatever he can into his mouth, barely even pausing to breathe. "Dude," you say, "You're gonna make yourself puke if you don't slow down."

He says something that you're pretty sure is some variant of "fuck you," but it's kind of hard to tell with him trying to speak with a mouth crammed full of food. You just roll your eyes and go back to your own meal.

"So," you say eventually, "You have anything you wanna talk about, or are we just gonna sit here awkwardly all day?"

"Mmh?" Ampora looks up at you, one eyebrow raised.

"Well, we're kinda stuck together," you explain, "And I don't know about you, but I wasn't planning on spending the entire day reading while you sleep on your little bed-shelf. So, I figured we could talk. Y'know, like normal people do when they're bored and stuck in a room with someone."

He swallows his mouthful of food and gazes at you warily. "I ain't got anythin to talk about," he says.

You look pointedly at him. "Really? Nothing? I'm not exactly asking you to tell me Legion secrets here. I just wanna talk."

Ampora still looks confused. You resist the urge to groan.

"You know, have a  _conversation_? Don't tell me you guys don't have those in the Legion, because I don't think it's possible for a society to be that ass-backwards."

"A course we do!" Ampora says, looking affronted, "The hell do you take us for?!"

"A lot of things," you say bluntly.

He draws himself up like he's about to spit an insult back at you, but then he just sort of deflates, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and closing his eyes like he's trying to stave off a headache. "I ain't got anythin I  _wanna_ talk about," he says.

You shrug. "Yeah, I figured you wouldn't be all 'hey let's swap life stories' about this. Look, man, I'm bored out of my skull, and while the books I've got here are some of the finest-quality literature left on planet Earth, I'm not really in the mood to read them all day." You neglect to mention that you've read them all before. Several times. "Or I could read them  _to_ you, if you'd prefer that."

"Yeah, no thanks," Ampora says, looking up at you, "I can see the titles from here, an I'm gettin the impression that havin you read that shit to me is gonna make me wanna claw my ears off."

"I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that," you say.

Ampora smiles and rolls his eyes teasingly at that, which suddenly gives you the crazy urge to playfully elbow him, or shove him, or find something to mock that  _he_ likes, or... fuck, you don't know. This feeling is quite frankly alarming you. Play-fighting, verbally or physically, was something you'd only ever do with friends (and Kankri). It makes sense to tease and rib Maryam and Captor, all three of you are pretty close, maybe even close enough for you to start calling them by their first names. (You should probably break that last-name-basis habit, they must think you're rude as hell) What  _doesn't_ make sense is feeling the urge to joke around with a legionary that you only just met.

With a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, you realize that you've  _been_ acting relatively friendly with him for the past two days, or at least like you're on okay terms with him. Yeah, you talk pretty casually to and swear at the other soldiers, but only the privates, because you're all the same rank, and it's probably a brothers-and-sisters-in-arms sort of thing. But you  _never_ act so casual around higher-ranking soldiers. You never even act that way around _civilians_ , because you're a soldier of the NCR and you need to set a good example, even if some of of your fellow soldiers seem to be determined to make total asses of themselves in public.

The thing is, Ampora isn't even a civilian. He's from the Legion. He's undoubtedly killed people,  _your_ people, without even batting an eye. This dude pretty much worships a guy that's responsible for the deaths and enslavement of countless people. And yet here you are, acting all chummy (sort of) and  _trying to strike up a conversation_ with him. And he's  _reciprocating_. _  
_

Fuck. You put your half-eaten plate aside and rest your head in your hands. Again, you're being thrown off-balance by how fucking _human_ this guy is. Thinking of the Legion as nothing but a bunch of monsters is pretty much the main moral defense of every soldier in the NCR. You're no exception. It makes it easier, you've found, to fight an entire fucking society when you dehumanize them, think of them as the enemy and nothing else. And as completely fucked up and heinous as the Legion is, you can't help but feel slightly sick at the fact that it's made up of humans, individuals that fight and die in the name of Caesar. And they don't know anything else.

"Kar?" Ampora says, his voice cutting through your thoughts, and he's making you feel even worse because he shouldn't sound so goddamn  _concerned_ about you, like you're friends. "Earth to Karkat? You're startin to freak me out."

"Oh," you say, stupidly. You shake yourself, just slightly, and look over at the legionary that's throwing you off so much. "Sorry. I was just... thinking."

"Must'a been one helluva thing you were thinkin about," Ampora says, picking up the last scrap of mystery meat off his plate and popping it into his mouth. "You were zonin out so hard I swear I could hear you makin a dial tone like one a those old world phones."

"How the hell do you know those exist?" you say, "I thought you Legion asswipes are all 'technology is evil.'" Fuck, you're doing it again.

"Just because we don't use 'em doesn't mean we don't know they exist," Ampora says dryly, "'Sides, I haven't been a legionary all my life. You know that."

"Yeah, but isn't the Legion made up of like, a bunch of different tribes that got rounded up and put into pretend-Roman armor?" you say, ignoring the irritated look he gives you, "Last time I checked, Tribals don't use tech."

"I wasn't a fuckin Tribal," he says, "We, I mean, the village I came from was... fuck, why am I even tellin you this shit?" He looks away from you, and you make a note of how he looks both embarrassed and angry with himself.

"It shouldn't matter though, right?" you point out. When he just stares at you, confused, you go on, "From what I've gathered, you're all like 'the first ten years of my life don't matter at all,' or whatever. So what's the harm in you telling me?"

Ampora gives you a look that you can't quite place. You wonder, briefly, if this is what Peixes meant when she'd said she wanted you to 'rehabilitate' him, that you should become friends with the guy as if that'll make up for all the damage the Legion's done to him. Yeah, you're liking the guy against your will, but you aren't exactly a therapist, and the fact that he had to be sedated to prevent him from trying to off himself tells you that the Legion did a fucking number on him.

There's a long pause, before Ampora sighs, runs one hand through his weird blonde-streaked hair, and says, "Okay, fine. You gotta point. That part a my life might'as well never've happened, far as I'm concerned. If you really wanna fuckin know, I'll tell you."

He hesitates, as if steeling himself for what he's going to say. You have to stop yourself from pointing out that his behavior is implying that he feels the exact opposite of what he says he does when it comes to his life before the Legion. Snark is probably not going to help right now.

"My... the village was founded by my parents, an a bunch a other people that came from one a those Vaults," he begins, "Y'know, the bigass bunkers they made before the war?"

"Yeah, I know about those," you say, again having to stop yourself from being snide. You'd have to be an idiot to not know about Vaults. It might explain his weird accent, though.

Ampora continues. "Anyway, they all left the Vault ages before I was born. I think my mom was pregnant with my brother then. Never did find out why they abandoned it; Dad used to say he'd tell me when I got older, but then... you know. I figured it didn't really matter. So they found an abandoned pre war town that was in pretty okay condition, like, not fallin over, not irradiated as fuck, not fulla goddamn raiders, an surrounded by actual decent farmland. They got real fuckin lucky when they found that place. So... yeah, that's how I know about old world tech shit; my parents told me an my brother about it. Never saw any workin tech stuff myself besides the Pip-Boys almost everyone had." His mouth twitches into a slight half-smile. "Cronus got my dad's when he turned fifteen. I woulda gotten my mom's, but the Legion came before then. They probably wouldn't a let me keep it, anyways. Don't really care much, now."

He falls silent, and you raise your eyebrows. "That it?" you ask.

"I ain't gonna say any more about them," he replies, "That was ages ago, an I don't give a fuck anymore."

"Okay, shit, no need to get snippy," you say, "But... thanks for telling me."

"Thanks? What for?"

You shrug. "We might as well get to know each other if we're gonna be doing this every day."

He scowls. "I ain't gonna tell you about bein in the Legion, if that's what you're anglin for."

"Does having a friendly conversation not mean the same thing in the Legion that it does here?" you ask, one eyebrow raised, "No, numbnuts, I'm not gonna try to get intel out of you or anything. That stuff isn't my job. Like hell I'm gonna talk to you about all the top-secret NCR shit I know. To be honest, I don't know much anyways. I've only been on tour for like, a month."

He gives you another half-smile. "Wow, you're a fuckin newbie."

"Excuse me for having an actual life before I joined the army, douchewad," you say, smiling back.

Ampora rolls his eyes, and you can't help but laugh, just a little. There's another brief pause, and then he says, hesitantly, "...Do you... wanna tell me about it?"

"About what?"

He waves a hand. "Fuck, I dunno, where you came from. I told you about mine."

"Sure," you say. He looks startled, which just makes you laugh again, "Dude, I'm not all tied up about my childhood like you. Don't give me that fucking face, I didn't mean it like you care about where you grew up. You're just all tight lipped about it like it's taboo or something. I'm not. I've already told Captor and Maryam tons about shit like that."

"Oh," he says, "...So, is it okay if you tell me? Not like I give a shit, but it's something to talk about, like you said."

Yet again, you have to hold back on being snarky with him. Like hell he doesn't care. So instead you grin as you say, "Want me to tell you about the time my brother took me to the store, and his dumb ass got the both of us lost?"

He blinks, then grins right back at you. "Sure."

So you launch yourself into the story, and he is surprisingly attentive as he listens, occasionally commenting here and there, or laughing as you recall the way Kankri had tried to act all cool about being totally lost in the city with his kid brother, but was obviously on the verge of panicking, and how he'd burst into tears and clung to your dad's legs when you both had finally run into him.

As you talk, you can't help but reflect on how easy this all is. Talking with Ampora like he's... well, like he's one of your fellow soldiers, instead of a fucking legionary. It's not really unnerving you, not anymore. If anything, it's starting to make you feel more at ease about this whole thing. Maybe Peixes was right when she'd picked you for this job. You still don't really know what the hell you're doing, but maybe this is actually helping Ampora, in a weird way. Maybe you're actually making a difference.

You don't notice how fast time is flying by until Peixes arrives hours later to dismiss you, and when you say good night to Ampora, he surprises you by responding with a smile and a "see you later, Kar." Like he's actually looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Peixes looks absolutely delighted.

\---

Your name is Kanaya Maryam, and you are exhausted. Guard duty is nerve-racking, especially outside of the Southern wall, which has been subject to a disquieting amount of Fiend activity lately. You and the other soldiers unfortunate to receive that assignment had had to chase off several groups of the vicious raiders. While you'd managed to walk away with no injuries, Private Norman had been hit by one of the Fiends wielding one of those laser assault rifles, and is currently in the medical tent being treated for severe burns. You yourself had had one terrifying moment where you swear you felt a bullet shoot past your ear, _just_ far enough to not hit you, but still so close that you could feel it parting your hair, and you heard as well as felt the horrible rush of air as it passed you.

Now you and Sollux are sitting in the abandoned truck that you both, as well as Karkat, had claimed as your unofficial "hang out when we have nothing else to do" spot. You'd managed to smuggle some beer out of the food stores earlier, and now you're sitting on the edge of the truck, sipping your drink and enjoying the quiet after guarding against Fiends for hours. Sollux is halfway into his own bottle, and is sitting beneath you on a stack of crates. Neither of you are being very secretive, even though you're drinking smuggled alcohol in plain sight. It's not like anyone really cares if some of the soldiers get a bit tipsy while they're off duty, so long as they don't get completely plastered and have to spend the next morning nursing a hangover.

You've always had a high tolerance for alcohol and you haven't had much besides a few sips, but you make a mental note to keep an eye on Sollux. He can be such a self-destructive idiot sometimes. 

"Look who it is," Sollux drawls suddenly.

You look up from your beer. Karkat is walking over to you from the terminal building, looking just as tired as you feel. You nod at him as he joins you and Sollux, clambering up beside you. He settles in just inside the empty trailer, just above where you're resting on the slightly lowered edge. Below you, Sollux snickers.

"Damn, KK," Sollux says, "You look like you got into a fight with a Deathclaw."

"I feel like I did. Gimme a beer, will you, Mar--Shit, I mean Kanaya," Karkat says.

You pick up a bottle from the open crate beside you and hand it to him. "I'm glad to see that you've progressed to addressing me by my first name," you say, "For that, I won't even scold you for not saying 'please.'"

Karkat shrugs as he tilts his head back and takes a mouthful of beer. "I figured it was time, that's all. We've known each other for long enough, right, Sollux?"

"I was starting to think you'd never get off your high horse," Sollux replies.

"Oh, fuck you," Karkat snaps.

"Rough day?" you ask.

"Nah, just long," he replies, "I'll tell you later. Y'know, when we can be sure no one's listening. I don't even know why Peixes wants us to be so secretive, shit's stupid as hell."

"It's so we won't tip off any frumentarii, shit-for-brains," Sollux says.

"Hmph. I still think it's stupid," Karkat huffs. He hesitates, then adds, more to you than to Sollux, "There is something about today I wanna tell you, though. But like, when we're completely alone. Not even around Peixes."

"What's so important that FF can't hear it?" Sollux asks.

"She can't hear it because it's _personal_ , you insufferable dickhole," Karkat growls, "I'm okay with telling you guys about it because you're my friends, alright? Peixes doesn't need to know. Yet. I dunno. I just want to run this by you both first." He looks down into his beer, then adds, almost as an afterthought, "I might just be imagining things. Who fucking knows. And don't you fucking  _dare_ tell Peixes unless I say you can, Sollux. Just because you're crushing on her doesn't mean you get to say shit that should stay between the three of us."

Sollux splutters, choking on his beer mid-swig. He starts coughing, and you briefly consider getting down and thumping him on the back, but he eventually gets himself under control and looks up at Karkat with a half-shocked, half-indignant look on his face that almost makes you laugh.

"What?!" he says, "I'm not  _crushing_ on her. How old do you think I am?  _Twelve_? Where the fuck did you even get that idea, anyway?"

Karkat looks smugly at him over his bottle as he takes another drink. "Don't deny it. I've seen how starry-eyed you get whenever you look at her."

Sollux's face is quickly turning bright red, and you don't think it's the alcohol. "You're projecting," he mutters.

"You're in denial," Karkat retorts.

"I just think she's nice, alright?" Sollux insists, "Why the fuck do you have to be so interested in shit like this?!"

" _Denial_ ," Karkat says in a singsong voice. Sollux looks both furious and mortified, and you decide it's time to intervene.

"That's quite enough, boys," you say, "Karkat, you don't need to be playing matchmaker for others; let them sort it out themselves. Sollux,  _please_ don't shout. I'm exhausted, and I was getting shot at by Fiends all day, and I would really appreciate it if you could settle this later. When I'm not present."

"Yes, mom," Sollux growls, but he thankfully seems to be calming down slightly.

"I'm assuming, Karkat, that what you wish to tell us is related to our assignment?" you say, changing the subject.

"Yeah," Karkat says, "But like I said, it's dumb personal shit. I just wanna make sure I'm not being stupid and that my brain isn't making this shit up before I tell Peixes. I don't know if I wanna tell her even if what I think is happening is happening. I dunno, it's really stupid."

"Well, we won't pressure you," you say soothingly, "Isn't that right, Sollux?"

"Sure, KN," he says. He finishes off what was left in his bottle, then holds out a hand to you. "Gimme another one."

"Do you want to have a hangover tomorrow?" you ask, "I highly doubt that will assist you when you're--how did you put it--'trying to keep these ancient systems running for more than five minutes.' Though I believe you used more expletives when you said it."

"Ugh, don't remind me," Sollux mutters, "I'm not wasted enough to think about that."

"You're not supposed to be wasted at all, genius," Karkat says.

"Bite me," Sollux replies.

They quickly launch into another round of bickering, and you just sigh and lean back, letting yourself relax after an extremely long day. This isn't quite where you thought you'd end up when you'd left home all those months ago, sitting on the back of a truck, drinking beer and listening to your friends argue after a day of trying not to get shot by vicious, drug-addled raiders, with an assignment hanging over your head that you still don't quite understand and that you're not sure you ever will, but it's enough. It's not what you expected, but it's enough.

You wouldn't trade it for the world.

\---

Your name is Eridan Ampora, and you feel more resigned than repulsed as Brooks injects chems into your arm. You still don't know why they're necessary--you can sleep perfectly well on your own and it's not like you have anything you'd be able to off yourself with, and you're slightly disconcerted to find that you're not sure you do want to anymore--but you know there's no point in arguing. Besides, it's not like they're  _bad_ , not really, they feel kinda nice with the way they make everything fuzz over, and, as they kick in and muffle the edges of your thoughts like a warm blanket, the way they combine with the heavy, full feeling in your belly after having the (kinda small but still nice) dinner you just ate is making you feel content in a way that's unfamiliar, but not unpleasant. You kind of want to sleep now, sleep sounds nice, and you don't really notice as someone takes your glasses and coaxes you into laying down on your side. Chems are still wrong, duh, but if you don't really have a choice, then you might as well enjoy what you can, right? Right. 

"Excuse me, Eridan. Stay awake for just a moment, please. I have something I want to ask you."

"Mmmuh?" You open your eyes and raise your head slightly, blinking slowly up at whoever was rude enough to talk to you just now. Oh. It's Peixes. She's standing over you, leaning down and smiling, her long hair falling over her shoulders and catching the light in a way that makes her seem to almost glow, though you're pretty sure that's from the chems, but it's still pretty. "Whaasit?"

She smiles at you, and you're not sure if it's a friendly smile or a I-feel-sorry-for-you smile, but you grin back just in case. The goggles she's wearing make her eyes look really big, or maybe they're always big but that doesn't matter, and the way she's looking at you is kind and warm and you don't think you can not-like her anymore.

"I know you want to sleep, but this'll only take a second, okay? Then I'll let you rest," she says.

You nod, confused.

"Are you enjoying speaking with Karkat?" she asks.

That's... a weird thing to ask you. Why is she keeping you up for that? "Kar," you say, and Peixes nods, so you go on, "'S nice. We talked. I'unno. I wanna sleep."

She gives you another smile and pats you, which makes you hum a little, pleased with how nice that felt. It's kinda like how Karkat patted you before, when... well, you know it happened before. Your brain isn't up to the task of sorting through your memories at the moment.

"Thanks, Eridan," she says, and you aren't sure what she's thanking you for, considering that the question was dumb and you didn't give her much of an answer, but whatever. She turns to look at Brooks, who you just realized is still here. "I think we're making some progress, we should ask Karkat about..."

You don't really pay attention to what she's saying, because she's done asking you the thing and you can sleep now, and that is kind of on the top of your list of priorities right now. So you let your head sink back onto the thin mattress, letting whatever Peixes and Brooks are saying fade into white noise as you sink, blissfully, into sleep. You don't notice the little pile of books that Peixes leaves by the chair.

 

_That night, you dream of being held in the arms of someone warm and familiar, clinging to them as they rub your back and murmur soothingly to you, their voice soft and calming. In the dream, you are young and small, barely old enough to speak in full sentences, and your mother is holding you and shushing you after a particularly frightening nightmare. You're vaguely aware that two other people are with you, one with a deep, thrumming voice that instantly makes you even more relaxed, because you know that the owner of the voice will keep you safe, will never let anything bad happen to you. Him and Mommy both._

_The third person with you is smaller, young, like you, but still big enough for you to consider him safe and protecting and comforting like Mommy and Daddy. He pats you, awkwardly, like he doesn't know what he's doing, but you don't mind, because he's trying and that' s calming enough. Your family listens as you tell them about your nightmare, tearfully and in broken, disjointed sentences that makes it kinda hard for them to follow what you're saying, but you seem to get the gist of it across._

_You tell them that you'd dreamed that you were alone and scared, and you had heard them calling for you but you couldn't find them no matter where you looked. There had been people with you, but they weren't safe like your family, they were unfamiliar and scary and they'd followed you and they said that they were your family now, that you would stay with them. You cling to your mother and tell them about how awful it had been, and you beg them through your tears to not let anyone else take you, for them to stay, please stay._

_"Hush... hush, sweetie," Mommy says, rubbing soothing circles into your back, "I'm here._ We're  _here. We won't leave you. Hush."_

_"Yeah, who'd wanna take you, anyway?" your brother pipes up._

_"Cronus!" Mommy scolds him._

_You giggle, the leftover fear from your nightmare lessened by your brother's clumsy attempt to console you. Cro's dumb a lot, but he tries, even if the way he tries is even dumber sometimes. You hear Daddy sigh, and suddenly his hand's on yours, and you grab two fingers in your small fist. Daddy laughs at that, softly, which makes you smile, but you don't look up from where your face is pressed into Mommy's shirt._

_"It's okay, Eri, we aren't gonna leave," Daddy says, "It was just a nightmare. We wouldn't let something like that happen, ever."_

_You sniffle and nod slightly, and slowly you calm down, the last of the fear ebbing away as your family comforts you. You drift back to sleep as you listen to the soothing sounds of their voices._

 

You wake up that morning with a pounding headache and tears on your cheeks, and you have no idea why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eridan's eating habits are a seahorse joke. Since food passes through a seahorse's digestive system really quickly, they have to eat almost constantly. Hence, Eridan's a bottomless pit.
> 
> The more you know.
> 
> (Also the next chapter's gonna ~~finally~~ have some action in it. And by action, I mean a series of flashbacks about extremely violent events, courtesy of the Legion being awful)


	6. Chapter 6

It turns out to be surprisingly easy for Karkat to convince Officer Peixes to let the three of you use her office as a private place to meet. In fact, she's rather enthusiastic about it. She ushers you all through the door, and you make yourselves at home, seated around her desk. At least, as close to home as an office can be. Which isn't close at all. Peixes is trying, though, and that's what counts.

Maybe her exuberance isn't the best thing right now, though. Sollux flops into his chair with a groan, resting his head against the back and squeezing his eyes shut. Peixes gives him a sympathetic look as she sits down in her usual spot, behind her desk.

"Yeah, I know," she says, startling Sollux into looking up and squinting at her, "Hangovers are a bitch."

Sollux blinks, grunts in what you assume is agreement, and promptly leans his head on the back of his chair again.

"It's your fucking fault for drinking too much, you lightweight," Karkat says. Sollux flips him off.

You and Peixes share an amused look, before she straightens up and clears her throat. Once she's made sure she has Sollux and Karkat's attention, she smiles.

"You guys want some drinks?" Peixes asks.

All three of you just stare, which makes her let out a small laugh.

"Not those kinds of drinks! I meant, do you want soda, or something? I think I still have some Sunset Sarsaparilla stashed here somewhere... Aha!" She opens a drawer on her side of the desk and pulls out four bottles of the soft drink, looking triumphant.

"Uh... you really don't need to--" Karkat begins, but is cut off by Peixes shoving a bottle into his hands.

"Nonsense! We're all friends here, right?" Peixes pops off the cap of her bottle, pockets it, and then swallows a mouthful of soda. She motions for you and Sollux to take the remaining two sodas. Sollux doesn't seem like he's about to move, so you take both and poke him with one until he gives in and takes it from you.

"This is just gonna make my mouth dryer," he mutters.

"I've got Nuka-Cola in my filing cabinet, if you want that," Peixes says.

Sollux just shrugs and takes a swig of soda. You barely keep yourself from rolling your eyes.

"So," Peixes says, folding her hands across the desk and looking at Karkat expectantly, "What's this about?"

"Uh, well," Karkat says, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand, "I was kind of hoping we could... talk about it privately first? Like, just the three of us. Kanaya and Sollux. And me. Alone."

"No," Peixes says at once, her voice as bright as ever, but with a forceful undertone that takes you aback.

Karkat looks equally surprised. "Huh?"

"I said no," Peixes replies. She looks (somewhat) sorry, yet that same, slightly unnerving forceful tone in her voice remains. Sollux is giving her a look that you can't quite place.

You raise your eyebrows. "Why not?"

"Please understand, Kanaya, I'm not trying to be rude or anything," Peixes says, giving you an apologetic half-smile, "But I can't let you discuss something like this in private, without me. It's unsafe."

"You haven't even asked what we're gonna talk about--" Karkat begins.

"You came to me first thing in the morning and asked if I could relieve your friends of their duties for an hour or so, in order for you to have an important discussion. You then asked to use my office as a safe place to meet. It's pretty obvious that this is about Eridan. I didn't need to ask," Peixes says evenly.

"Fair enough," you say.

Karkat looks a little flustered, while Sollux still is staring at Feferi with that odd, unreadable expression. His hangover seems to have been temporarily overshadowed by... whatever is going through his head.

"So," Peixes continues, "I can't let you keep me out of the loop on anything. Like I said, it's not safe."

"What do you mean?" Karkat asks.

"Some rather... suspicious things have been happening regarding patrols and reports. Now, you are not to repeat this to  _anyone_ \--this could probably get me into huge trouble, but I think it's best if you know. We suspect frumentarii."

There's a pause. "Shit," Karkat finally breathes out.

Peixes nods. "It's... bad, I'll say that much. We don't know how far it goes, or if we're even right about this, but all evidence points to our camp having been infiltrated. So I have to keep tabs on you three. Karkat, be cautious with what you say around Eridan. He must  _not_ know under  _any_ circumstances. For all we know, they might have already managed to contact him."

"Is it at all possible," you say, "For Ampora to have been deliberately captured in order to gather further information on us?"

Karkat's eyes widen with horror. "I hadn't even thought of that."

"I have," Peixes says, "Which is why we're keeping this whole project as quiet as possible. We do background checks on everyone involved--though those aren't all that reliable, people can lie--and while you three being relatively new here may be cause for suspicion in others, I have it on good authority that you all lived West of here. In the Core, correct?"

"Yeah," Sollux says. He rubs his temples. "Fuck."

Karkat shifts awkwardly. "So what can we do about this?" he asks, "We can't just let some fucking Legion spies wander around."

"If we act without concrete proof, they'll know we're on to them," Peixes replies, "For now, all we can do is be extremely careful. Report any suspicious behavior to me. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," the three of you reply in unison.

"Good. Now that we've gotten that sort of out of the way," she says, as bubbly as ever, the weird, almost  _powerful_ tone gone just as suddenly as it came, "Tell me what this is about, Karkat. Are you worried about something?"

"Yeah, I... fuck, I don't know how to ask this," Karkat mutters, "I mean, this is kinda trivial compared to that frumentarii shit."

Peixes shrugs. "Say it anyway."

"Just get this over with so I can go work on the computers, where it's  _quiet_ ," Sollux says.

"I tried to get you to drink water last night," you say, taking a sip of your soda.

"Shut up, KN," Sollux groans.

Peixes laughs. Sollux looks at her like he can't figure out if she's laughing at him or with him, which makes you want to smile. With anyone else he would have snarled at them already. He can be so transparent regarding his emotions sometimes.

" _Anyway_ ," Karkat says loudly, lowering his voice when he sees he's gotten everyone's attention, "So... yeah the thing I wanted to talk about. It's, uh... kinda really fucking stupid, but..." he bites his lip nervously, "Shit. Okay. I'm worried."

He falls silent at that. Peixes waits for him to go on, and when he doesn't, she prompts him. "Worried about what?"

"...Okay, this is gonna sound stupid as hell," Karkat says, "But... I've been thinking about a lot of shit these past few days. Like, talking to Ampora is making me wonder stuff that... fuck, I don't know, that makes me think shit like if I'm even..." his voice trails off and he waves one hand absently, "If I'm even helping at all." _  
_

Peixes merely looks at Karkat, her eyes narrowed. You weren't exactly expecting him to say that. Sollux shoots Karkat another surly glare.

"You dragged me all the way here,  _while I'm hungover_ , for  _this_?" Sollux snaps, "So you're finally realizing how stupid this fucking assignment is. Big whoop."

"Sollux," Peixes says softly. He flushes when he realizes what he just said, and who he said it in front of.

"Shit, I--"

"It's okay," Peixes cuts him off, "I get it. I really do. No, no, don't be all embarrassed; I'm not mad." She pauses thoughtfully, then goes on, "Do you want me to tell you all why I'm so invested in this?"

"Yeah," Sollux says sheepishly, "I mean... sure."

Peixes gives him a soft smile. "All my life, I've wanted to help people. I grew up in the heart of the NCR. I guess you could say I was born into politics; my mom is a pretty important person. I had a comfortable life, I really did. I was wealthy, I lived in a city that was relatively intact, I never had to scrounge for food or fight off predators just to survive another day. I barely even knew what life was like, out in the Wasteland, until I got older. I saw all these hurt people, how they were struggling while my family and all these politicians around me were living cozy little lives and I just... I wanted to help them. I tried to join the Followers at first, but my mom was pretty firmly against that. Then I learned about what was going on over here in the Mojave--this was just before the Battle of Hoover Dam--and I enlisted right away. Mom was pretty thrilled; having a daughter in the army is good PR, I guess.

"See, I joined because I want to help make the world better, safer to live in, closer to what it used to be than the ruined Wasteland it is now. And I think that the NCR is going to do that. Caesar's Legion is the polar opposite of what I want the world to be like. And I don't just want to wipe every last one of them out. I want to help them. And you all working with Eridan is a way for me to see if this is possible, if we can help people that seem like a total lost cause to everyone else. So, yes, I know that this assignment seems ridiculous to pretty much everyone. But I believe that it's not just our job to try and defeat the Legion, but to also undo what it's done."

She falls silent and smiles. "I honestly think that this can help people. And you've already made progress Karkat, I can see that. I really think we can make this work."

 Karkat nods, then sighs. "Look, I'm glad I can help you try this or whatever," he says, "But I'm not a doctor. And Ampora's seriously fucked up. Like, psychological scars that require therapy fucked up. He hides it most of the time, but I get glimpses every now and then, and I don't feel like I can fucking do this. My brother's the one that's a doctor, not me. I can chat with Ampora all I want but I don't know how much good that'll do."

"Karkat," Peixes says, "I don't tell people to do things unless I believe that some good will come out of it. And I know that having you do this, Karkat, is going to help. The same goes for you, Kanaya and Sollux. Now, you two have duties to attend to, and you, Karkat, are late for your daily babysitting gig. Go meet Anders by the hall; he'll walk you down. Also, I want the three of you to meet me here after dinner, got it? I need to go over the specifics regarding our little frumentarii problem."

She stands by the door as you three leave. You and Karkat don't notice when Peixes calls out Sollux's name in a hushed voice and beckons him back into her office, nor do you notice the click of the lock as the door swings shut.

\---

Your name is Eridan Ampora, and you've never really considered yourself the sentimental type. The Legion doesn't really approve of that, not when you could be spending your time doing practical stuff, like fighting or training or obeying orders or anything  _but_ replaying old memories that don't mean shit anymore. You agree with that; there's no point in being all emotional over stuff that happened in the past and is over now.

So why do your thoughts keep wandering back to memories of being in the Legion?

It's not like they're  _bad_ memories. (except maybe Hoover Dam, that battle scared the hell out of you, but you are never going to admit that to anyone ever) You're rather proud of most of the things you've done in the name of Caesar. Hell, you've survived nearly sixteen years as a soldier, which is more than you can say for some of the idiots you'd trained alongside. Your mouth briefly twitches into a ghost of a smile. You've done a lot of dangerous shit, especially in the past three years as a scout. You've done jobs that would kill most troops and walked away with only a few scratches and bruises to show for it. You think you've earned the right to brag a little.

Still, though, the fact that you're lying on your shitty little bed-shelf, staring absently up at the ceiling, and mulling over past events over and over again and being all nostalgic is fucking insane. What the hell is your brain even doing? 

You're bored. That must be it. You'd tried to read the books Karkat apparently left behind yesterday, but that ended pretty quickly once you realized that yep, you were right about them being awful. Although it is kind of cute that Karkat reads shitty romance novels. So your brain is trying to make up for you being bored out of your skull by distracting you with old memories. You don't even have a headache anymore to focus on; that nurse asshole had given you some Med-X again, though you'd been relieved when he told you that they would reduce the dosage alongside whatever chem they keep knocking you out with. The less poison they inject into your fucking blood, the better.

You sigh, wondering what would happen if you somehow managed to escape from here. Heh, they'd probably punish you for getting caught like a fucking idiot. You wouldn't blame them. You remember one guy whose name you don't even know that got his dumb ass captured by a tribe. He managed to kill the small group of Tribals holding him and get back to the camp, and when he did they'd flogged him so hard the guy couldn't lie down for two weeks. They'd probably do the same to you. Maybe worse, since you got captured by the NC-fucking-R instead of some ignorant little tribe.

At least you're not thinking of your parents' village. That'd fucking suck.

Your thoughts are suddenly interrupted by your cell door unlocking with a loud clang, followed by a groan of metal scraping against metal as it's pushed open by... huh, it's one of the guards. Anderson, right? Damn, that guy weirds you out. He doesn't even glower at you like other guard does; he just looks really tired all the time. Not that you don't know the feeling, but him not showing any other emotion is weird as fuck.

"Hey, wake up," he says, his voice as flat as it always is (seriously is this guy even  _human_?) "Your friend's here."

You have no idea who he's talking about until Karkat walks into view. Oh.

Karkat mutters something you don't quite catch to the guard that you're pretty sure is either a thanks or a dismissal. The weird guard--you're seriously wondering if he's some kind of android or something at this point because what the fuck--just nods and shuts the door as Karkat steps inside your cell.

" _Ave_ ," you say in what you hope is a polite tone. Can't let Karkat see how distracted by your own thoughts you keep getting. Shit is shameful.

Karkat gives you a puzzled look. "The fuck is an 'ah-way?'"

"It means 'hello,' dumbass," you say.

"Oh yeah," Karkat says, rolling his eyes. "I keep forgetting you guys use Latin sometimes. Man, when you play dress-up, you really go all out."

That makes no fucking sense. "What the hell are you talkin about?"

"Never mind."

You narrow your eyes at him, but don't keep asking. You have the feeling that Karkat is one of those people that gets ridiculously stubborn about the stupidest stuff. Still, though, what the hell was that about? That 'playing dress-up' thing makes no fucking sense, and you don't get why Karkat is making that face at you. It's like some weird combination of exasperated, pitying, and amused. That also makes no sense.

What's wrong with Latin, anyway? It's the language of the fucking gods; hell, you wouldn't be surprised if Mars himself taught Caesar how to speak it. It had been one of the first things you'd learned when you were taken in. Figures that nobody in the NCR knows it. Fucking playing old world republic like they know what they're doing, as if they're blind to the fact that republics were the thing that caused the Great War in the first place. Sometimes the fact that an entire fucking country can be that stupid and still manage to be a threat to the Legion completely mystifies you.

You don't realize that you've been zoning out until you hear Karkat saying your name. Repeatedly.

"Sorry," you say, shaking your head a little. "My brain just got a bit sidetracked, that's all."

Karkat furrows his eyebrows. "Are you okay?"

Shit. "Yeah, I'm good," you say, giving him your best calm grin. You are totally in the present right now. One hundred percent.

Karkat stares at you incredulously. You squirm a little on your bed.

"Fuck it, okay, fine," you snap, "I've just been thinkin about shit, alright? No big deal."

"What kind of shit?" Karkat asks. Holy fuck, is he actually  _worried_ about you? Nuh-uh. No way. Not gonna let this happen.

"It's stupid, okay?! Leave me alone," you snarl.

To your surprise, Karkat scoffs at that. "So, what, you're just gonna sit there and stew in whatever the fuck is bothering you? That's the opposite of healthy, man."

 "I ain't bothered by it."

"Could've fooled me."

You scowl at him and look away. "Why the fuck d'you wanna know so much, anyways?"

"Well, let's see," Karkat says, crossing his arms, "Maybe I'm  _concerned_ about you because you look like you're trying not to freak out. You know, like how I would be with anyone I've been stuck with for several days, 'cause that's  _basic fucking human decency_."

"Seriously," you sigh, "It's nothing. I'm just being stupid." You're vaguely aware that, for some reason, him saying he's worried about you has made those uncomfortable warm feelings start to well up again. You squash them back down immediately, without thinking about it.

"Tell me anyway," Karkat says, "Talking helps with this stuff."

You glare at him. "You always this fuckin pushy?"

Karkat just shrugs and motions for you to continue. He's not gonna let you get out of this, is he?

"God, you're a persistent bastard," you mutter, "I was... thinkin about shit that--fuck, this is so stupid--I was thinkin about stuff that happened. Like... Legion stuff."

Karkat raises his eyebrows. "That's it?"

"Yeah," you say, "Like I said, I'm just bein fucking stupid. I think some a your nostalgic BS must'a rubbed off on me yesterday."

"You're being nostalgic about being in the Legion," Karkat says, looking at you like you just grew a second head or something. "The hell is so stupid about that? I mean, besides the fact that it's being in the Legion we're talking about here."

You ignore that last bit. "Bein sentimental is what weak people do when they can't fuckin let go a shit that doesn't matter," you say flatly, "I mean, bein all reminiscin an shit about glorious battles or awesome stuff you've done is okay, and I've done a lot a awesome shit, but that's not what..." you trail off uncertainly. Karkat merely watches you as you take a moment to work out what to say next. "Thinkin about all the shit I've done for Caesar isn't what's botherin me. Hell, I'd do it all again, I'm fuckin proud a that stuff. I've survived fifteen fuckin years in the Legion, I've seen over an over again how fuckin glorious we are, I've helped in gettin that glory, an I have no fuckin regrets about any a it." Something flickers in the back of your mind, something that reminds you of that warm (dangerous) feeling you keep getting around Karkat. You force yourself to ignore it.

"So what's bothering you?" Karkat asks. He's giving you a look that's a bit too calculating for your taste.

"I... it's the little shit," you say, somewhat sheepishly. God, you feel so stupid saying this out loud. "Like rememberin the guys I trained with. Most'a those dumb fucks are dead now, good fuckin riddance, but I keep thinkin about how scared we all were when the Legion first took us, an how we were almost friends after a year a trainin. I fought next to them an then later I watched most'a them die, an even though I was kinda friendly with them, I was glad they were dead."

"Eridan..." Karkat begins softly, but you go on, ignoring him.

"An I'm glad I didn't care, if a legionary dies then that's the way it should be, he's fulfilled his purpose or whatever. But now I can't stop thinkin about some a them and how we used to talk an shit an I don't know  _what_ I'm feelin about this, but--"

" _Eridan_!" Karkat snaps.

You instantly fall silent and look at him; you hadn't realized that you were staring off into space again. He's got this worried look on his face that makes something inside you  _throb_ , and you wish he'd leave and never come back because  _why is he making you feel these things_?

"Calm down," he says, and amazingly that somehow works, just a little. Your muscles start to relax a bit, muscles that you hadn't even known were getting all stiff in the first place. You take a deep, shuddering breath, then another. Finally, you bring yourself to continue.

"There's... there's more," you say quietly.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Karkat says, and he actually sounds scared now, and that makes you feel even worse.

"No, shit, don't--" you say, then take another deep breath, "I think... I think you were right. About needin to talk about it. I... fuck, I don't know how to do this." You put your face in your hands, wishing you could just sink into the ground and disappear. What the fuck is even happening to you?

Karkat waits patiently while you get yourself together. You're a bit surprised at how calming he's being, given how surly and foul-mouthed he is. When you finally start to talk, you're surprised at how clear and even your voice is. He doesn't make any comments, listening quietly. You're grateful for that; a few minutes in, you don't think you'd have heard anything he said either. You're aware of your mouth moving, you know that you're still sitting in your cell and talking to Karkat, but at the same time you're  _not_ in your cell, because as you delve deeper and deeper into the memories you've kept filed away for so long, hidden and closed off because they didn't matter, things get clearer and clearer to the point where you can hardly tell if they're memories or if they're happening right now. They happen one after another as you continue to speak, a nonstop barrage.

You let them come, washing over and engulfing you until there's nothing left.

 

 _The sun is setting, casting the barren Wastes in a sickly yellow-orange glow. Against the light, the crosses lining Interstate 40 are almost_ _silhouettes, casting row after row of long shadows across the cracked pavement._ _You can't help but stare at the crucified men and women, lashed to the sturdy wooden planks by their wrists and ankles. Some have obviously not been up there long, one young man is even lively enough to spit curses at you all as you pass. It doesn't bother you, much. He'll end up the same as the rest. The ones that have it worst must have been up there for days. They're hanging limply from their restraints, obviously clinging to life by a thread. They don't even have the energy to look up at you or the rest of the_  centuria _._

_The highway reeks of death and decay, and it makes you shudder. This is it, this is the might of the Legion. This is the fate of those that oppose Caesar; they are left on the cross to wither and rot, a reminder to others as to what happens to anyone that dares to stand in the way of his mighty conquest. You feel a slight thrill at the thought. You are a part of this. You are a part of the mighty army that will unite the Wasteland, that will put an end to the chaos left after the world was cleansed with Mars' fire. The thought exhilarates you. And then one of the crucified women begins to scream._

_She's close enough that you can see her clearly, and you're alarmed at how young she looks. She's one of the newer ones, and she's shrieking in terror and straining in her bindings, for there's a crow on her shoulder, flapping its wings and digging its claws into her flesh to keep its balance, and you know what's about to happen. The woman does, too. Her eyes are bulging with fear, but as the crow positions itself closer to her face, she shuts them protectively. Not that it helps. You can only stare, somewhat grateful that the crow's body is blocking your view of her face as it suddenly jerks forward, and now the woman is screaming even louder, shrieking and pleading and begging to be killed, please just kill her, don't let it do this._

_You can see blood pouring down her neck, and your stomach turns unpleasantly as the crow pulls back slightly, accompanied by a horrific wet ripping noise that can only be the woman's eye. Not one of the legionaries you're traveling with stops. You can see some are looking at her, but no one's pace even slightly falters. Including yours._

_Still, you watch, numb with horror as the crow begins to move on to the other side of her face. You get a glimpse of the gory mass of blood where her eye had been minutes before, and when the crow gets to work on where the other still is, her screams become ragged sobs that finally force you to look away and firmly fix your eyes forward._

_These men and women on the crosses are Profligates. You should be glad that they're suffering. On some level, you are. But at the same time, the woman had screamed in a way that had reminded you of someone very familiar to you, who had died with both of her legs shattered and her body covered in her own blood. That someone, who once comforted you after you'd had nightmares and helped teach you how to read, had screamed in much the same way as the hammers fell upon her legs, and had only stopped when death finally claimed her._

_You are a part of the Legion. The woman on the cross means nothing, as does the woman you'd once called family. You repeat these thoughts to yourself as you continue on, a neverending mantra._

_You are a part of the Legion. They mean nothing._

 

(You don't notice, lost in your own memories, as someone sits next to you and puts one arm around your shoulders. You relax a little in his presence, and your voice remains steady as you continue to speak, even though tears have begun to stream down your cheeks.)

 

_As a scout, it's your job to always be alert. Which is why you're ready and waiting by the time the young man attempting to sneak up on you finally appears. He's standing too far out into the open and hasn't noticed you crouching under the shelter of the rocky overhang where you'd temporarily set up camp. The fucking idiot. He's apparently under the impression that you're behind the larger cluster of rocks nearby, and he's eyeing it, his finger brushing the trigger of his gun like he thinks he's going to sneak up on you sleeping or something. You take the opportunity to size him up. Young, wearing basic leather armor, wielding a standard shotgun, combat knife strapped to his thigh. Has the look of a mercenary. Should be easy enough._

_You make your move when he begins to step forward. Your fingers are at the hilt of your (admittedly kind of small) machete, currently tucked safely into its sheath. You'd use your hunting rifle to take this guy out, but you're a little short on ammo at the moment thanks to an unfortunate incident involving a nightstalker nest that was in no way your fault whatsoever. Anyway, your machete will have to do for now._

_It's just your fucking luck that the guy realizes something's up when you're three feet away from him. You draw your machete as he whirls around and yelps in surprise and fear, no doubt intimidated by how fucking awesome your armor looks. He raises his gun, but not nearly fast enough. All of your combat training kicks in at once, and you're on him before he has time to aim. The grip on his gun was already a bit slack thanks to his shock, and it doesn't take much to knock it out of his hands. It goes off when it hits the ground, startling you and giving the man just enough space to pull back and get out his knife. Well there goes your plan to make this a quick, easy kill._

_You both eye each other, your blades at the ready. You can see his eyes darting from your arms, to your face, down at your legs, then at your arms again. Fucking moron, giving away where he's thinking of aiming for. Though you'd probably would have guessed even without his eyes flicking all over like that. His knife is sturdy, but small, and he'd most likely aim for the unprotected parts of your body. Which is why you're taken completely by surprise when the man surges forward, thrusting his knife at your shoulder. You aren't able to dodge him in time, and you hiss as you feel the blade slicing through cloth and flesh, just beneath your left pauldron. Luckily, your machete is in your right hand, and the idiot's left his side exposed in the attack._

_You swing, fury and pain making you hit a bit harder than you normally would have. The blade is strong and sharp, and it slices right through the man's flimsy leather armor and ends up buried several inches into his side. The man screams and stumbles. You brace one foot against his shoulder and wrench your machete from his body, ignoring his pained shriek._

_"Gross," you mutter, looking down at your machete, red and slick with gore. You ain't gonna put that in its sheath right now, that's for sure. So you jab it into the ground (just for the moment) and take a look at the gash in your shoulder. Huh. Not too deep. Could be worse. Some healing powder should..._

_"You f-fucking bastard," says a furious, trembling voice._

_Oh yeah, he's still here. You put your hand over your wound, not wanting to get your blood all over everything. "Mind tellin me why you were tryin to sneak up on me?" you ask. Normally you don't talk to kills, but this one actually managed to land a hit on you, and you're kinda pissed._

_"You're Legion, that's why," the man snaps._

_You roll your eyes. "No shit. But did I specifically do anythin, or...?"_

_"You took my sis... sister," the man gasps, "To fffucking Cottonwood Cove."_

_"I'm a scout, genius. Gettin slaves ain't my job."_

_The man glares at you and opens his mouth, probably to say something also incredibly stupid, but then groans and clutches at his side. Heh, you really did a number on him. Still, though..._

_You're not sure what makes you crouch down to be a bit more level with him, but you do. Damn, he's young. You'd be surprised if he was a day over twenty. "So, what," you say, "You thought you'd just go out an kill the first legionary you fuckin saw? An you thought that'd get your sister back?"_

_"I don't care!" the man yells._

_You just sigh and straighten up again. You could just slit this moron's throat and be done with it. Normally would would have by now. Something's stopping you, though. Something nagging at the back of your mind that you can't put a name to. Well, you have to go treat your shoulder right now. Make sure it doesn't get infected. The guy's gonna be dead soon enough, he's bleeding all over the place. Maybe if you let him live for a little while longer, you'll be able to name this weird emotion that's stirring inside you. That makes no sense, you know that, but it probably wouldn't hurt to try. Plus, the guy cut your fucking arm._

_He watches you as you return, your shoulder bandaged and freshly treated with the ground herbs you always carry with you. "Why...?"_

_"I'm low on food," you lie, "Havin a dyin guy bleedin all over the place might attract somethin."_

_"You're an asshole."_

_"Yeah, but I'm the one that's gonna eat tonight," you say, smugly._

_You spend the next half hour watching the guy bleed out. He runs out of energy to spend yelling insults at you, and after a while you're pretty sure he's unconscious, and you decide it's time to put this guy down. As you walk away, your supplies packed and your slightly cleaner machete back in its sheath, you don't look back at the now-headless corpse behind you, lying in a pool of blood._

_You make it a mile when you pause. Loss. That's what that feeling is. Seeing a guy pull a dumbass stunt for the sake of his sister is somehow making you feel like you've lost something incredibly important. You growl and kick a stone with your foot as you force yourself to keep walking._

_Loss. Ridiculous. You've never lost anything that mattered._

_Anything or anyone._

 

"...Eridan. Eridan!"

Someone's shaking you. You look up, because apparently you're hunched over with your arms wrapped tightly around yourself, to see Karkat sitting right next to you, looking worried and a little scared. You're disoriented for a moment, because you could've sworn that just a few seconds ago you were walking through the Mojave desert, and it takes you a few seconds to figure out where and when you are.

"What," you say, and oh wow, your throat hurts. And your face is wet. Fuck, have you been  _crying_? You let go of yourself and wipe your face with your hands. "Oh. Fuck. I'm sorry, I just..."

"You don't need to say anything," Karkat says, "What happened, Eridan?"

You look at him. "I was tellin you stuff, right?"

"Yeah, but you got all glassy-eyed and you started fucking crying and you wouldn't respond to anything I said. And you just kept fucking talking. It was weird as hell."

"Was I makin sense, at least?"

Karkat nods. "You told me about a girl getting eaten by a bird and a time you killed a guy," he says, and for some reason the way he says it all casually like he's talking about the fucking weather is funny as hell to you and you burst out laughing.

It takes a few minutes for you to convince Karkat that no, you're not laughing at the bird and dead guy thing, and the horrified way he'd asked you about that makes you laugh even harder. God, you haven't laughed this hard in fucking ages.

"Don't look so offended, Kar," you say, grinning.

"God, you horrible disaster," Karkat says under his breath. You elbow him. "Ow! Fuck, I'm just teasing. Seriously, though," he says, the relaxed look on his face gone immediately, "You freaked me the fuck out there. Are you okay?"

You purse your lips. "I dunno," you say honestly, "I mean, this stuff's still buggin me, and it's not what happened that's gettin me all weirded out, I'm totally fine with that, but..." you trail off.

"I think I know what you mean," Karkat says.

"Yeah? Good, 'cause then I don't have'ta bother explainin it," you say, "...I think it did help, though. A little. Just talkin like that."

"You had a fucking flashback and started crying."

"I feel like it kinda helped," you say, ignoring the way Karkat rolls his eyes. "What time is it, anyway?"

"About half an hour since you started," Karkat replies, "We don't have to keep talking about this stuff for the rest of the day."

You shrug. You feel all calm after that whole flashback thing, what the hell. The nagging sense of something being  _off_ is still there, but it's not bothering you as much as before. Maybe it's because you're sitting here, right next to Karkat. "Tell me some more stuff from when you were little," you say.

"Again?"

"Yes, again, that shit was entertainin," you say.

Karkat groans, but the effect is kind of ruined by the smile on his face.

\---

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you immediately head for Peixes' office after dinner and ask for permission to go to Freeside tomorrow, and when she hears your reason why, she complies. You're not looking forward to this, but you're  _way_ in over your head, and you need help.

It's time to visit your brother.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of wrote myself into a corner with the previous chapter, so writing this one was altogether difficult and unpleasant and I'm still not satisfied with it. I really need to find someone to beta this.
> 
> On a more positive note, yesterday was my last day of school and I'm graduating in June, so I'll have more time to dedicate to writing and refining this incredibly self-indulgent crossover.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got kind of carried away with this one. There's probably a ton of mistakes, but I'll fix them later, when I'm not half asleep. But hey, plot stuff is happening! Rejoice!
> 
> Warning: this chapter features some more filler OCs. Also a bonus cameo from my favorite companion.

In retrospect, asking to go to Freeside was a fucking stupid idea. Sure, Peixes had given you permission, but she'd needed to pull pretty much every string she had in order to get Colonel Hsu to allow this. First the doctor had to be convinced to let you out of the base under the condition that you were absolutely not, under no circumstances going to handle a weapon of any kind. You still think that's total bullshit, your arm is doing just fine and they'd even said the stitches could come out soon, but the doctor had been adamant. So then Peixes had to pull two other (more experienced) privates from their duties so they could escort your stupid ass.

So now here you are, standing outside the gates to Camp McCarran, being stared at by the two soldiers that unwillingly got saddled with you. A man and a woman. You don't know either of them very well. They introduce themselves as Jennifer Yuan and Peter Moreau. The fact that you've done drills with these two a couple times and still didn't know their names is kinda pathetic. At least they seem friendly enough.

Not to mention they both look to be about your age, which is nice. Jen is tall, taller than both you and Peter, with an angular, aristocratic face, pitch-black hair, and eyes that are almost dark enough to match. Peter is burly, with a thick reddish-brown hair and a beard that looks like it has approximately the same texture as steel wool. Jen is giving you a look that is kind of hard to read, and you're pretty sure she's sizing you up. Peter, on the other hand, seems pretty gung-ho about this whole thing, which is more than you can say for yourself.

All of you are in full armor, though you're the only one without a weapon. Still though, the feeling of wearing your familiar armor after being trapped in the camp for days and wearing only civilian clothes the entire time is slightly comforting. The fact that you need to be wearing armor at all is not. It's not that long of a trip to get to Freeside from the camp; it's about a thirty minute walk, an hour at the most. Fiends aren't really a problem on the route you're going. You'll be heading right around the sharecropper farms, which are heavily guarded, not to mention mostly surrounded by the old abandoned houses from before the Great War; Fiends usually stick to the larger ruins to the south. It's Freeside itself that's dangerous.

You're pretty sure that wearing full NCR armor will probably provoke an attack from the locals more than anything else, but it's not like there's anything out can do about it. You just want to get to Freeside, find the Mormon Fort, talk to Kankri, and then get out. Hopefully he's still there.

"C'mon," Jen says, "We're wasting daylight." Without waiting to see if the rest of you are following, she walks off purposefully up the cracked road, towards the farms. You get the impression that this Jen woman is accustomed to ordering others around. She seems pretty good at it, though, because her firm, authoritative tone spurs you into following her without thinking twice about it.

Damn, this lady walks fast. She's taller than you, and you have to hurry to keep up. Peter is having an easier time of it, but only barely.

"Slow the fuck down, Jen," Peter mutters.

Jen lets out a world-weary sigh, but complies. Slightly. Enough so that you can walk at a brisk pace without straining to keep up with her. The man shoots you a sympathetic glance.

"Sorry about Jen," he says, "She doesn't seem to understand that some of us don't normally walk like there's a pack of rabid coyotes after them."

"Oh, shut up, Peter," Jen snaps, mostly playfully.

By that time, mostly due to how fucking fast this Jen woman walks, you've rounded the corner and are now walking along the chain-link fence surrounding the farms. It's pretty early in the morning, but you can see that the workers are already out there in the fields. You can tell already that today's gonna be hot as hell, and you really don't envy those guys. Sure, they get paid to work here and are given protection and a place to sleep in return, but from what you can tell the crops aren't doing so hot. They have pretty much every kind of plant you can think of over there, but one out of every three plants looks like it's actually producing something. The ground looks dry and dusty, which it really shouldn't be if water is being flowed properly to the fields. No one's said anything about a water shortage, though, so you're probably just worrying over nothing.

"So, Vantas," Peter says, snapping you out of your thoughts, "Mind telling us exactly why we're going to Freeside?"

"It's confidential," you say promptly.

"Oh, really?" Jen says, giving you an amused look over her shoulder, like you're some kid that just said something adorable instead of a fucking soldier. "Peixes gave you something that important already? Man, kid, I've been here for a year and no one's given me any top-secret jobs."

"I didn't exactly ask for this," you mutter.

Jen smiles. "Relax. I'm only teasing. So, if you can't tell us what the job is, can you at least tell us what we're supposed to be doing? All Peixes told us was that we had to escort you to Freeside."

You sigh. "I guess it won't hurt. Fine, I need to talk to a Follower."

Peter and Jen both stop, alarmed. "Wait, a Follower? As in, a Follower of the Apocalypse? Kid, those guys aren't very fond of the NCR," Jen says.

"Nobody in Freeside is fond of the NCR," Peter adds.

You bite back the instinctive urge to snap your usual snarky, swear-filled reply. "I need to talk to one Follower in particular," you say. When Peter and Jen just give you even more puzzled looks, you add, "He's my brother."

"Yikes," Peter says, while Jen, thankfully, nudges the both of you into resuming walking. "I don't envy you."

You feel yourself getting defensive on Kankri's behalf. "What's wrong with my brother being a Follower?"

"Aren't those guys anarchists?" Peter asks.

" _Peter,_ " Jen says sharply, then, turning to you, she goes on, "What my friend is _trying_ to say is that the Followers don't exactly agree with the NCR's policies. What makes you think your brother will help you with an NCR job?"

"Because he's my brother," you say simply, though you yourself doubt Kankri will be easy to persuade. Not gonna tell these two that, though. "Just trust me on this, okay?"

"Alright, but I'm not happy about this," Peter mutters. Jen just rolls her eyes.

You round the corner and begin to walk along the eastern fence. In the distance, you can see the walls surrounding Freeside. You know that they're thick and sturdy, but you can't help but get the impression that whoever made them just threw together whatever large sheets of metal they could find, welded them all together, and called it a day.

"God, these houses always give me the creeps," Peter says suddenly.

You glance at him, then at the houses to your right. They're small, one-story buildings, with dry, cracked paint and thin roofs supported by rotting pillars that look like they could collapse at any second. Most of them have had their windows and doors boarded up. They look like they haven't been touched since the fucking Great War, and they're all colored various lackluster shades of brown. Hell, you can smell the rotting wood and plaster from where you're walking. You know some of the houses are sturdy enough for people to live in, and some actually are inhabited, but the ones lining the road sure as hell aren't.

"I don't think they're creepy," Jen says softly, "If anything, they make me sad."

You and Peter both look at her. She's staring almost wistfully at the rows of abandoned houses, and she sounds thoughtful as she goes on, "It's like... people used to live in these houses, you know? Then the bombs fell, and now they're just... gone. And these houses haven't fallen yet, but someday they're just going to crumble, and then they'll rot into dust, and no one's going to even know they were there in the first place."

Oh. Shit. You eye the houses, now feeling slightly uneasy.

"Wow, Jen, way to be a downer," Peter says.

She sighs. "I was just thinking out loud, Peter."

"You always think about morbid stuff like that, or...?" you ask before you can stop yourself.

Jen laughs. "I've always enjoyed history," she says, "And the Great War was one of my favorite subjects. Studying the old world was the reason I enlisted."

You raise your eyebrows, and she nods.

"Yup," she says, "I read about old world republics, and I decided that I wanted to help the NCR succeed where they failed. I didn't want a hand in politics, so I joined the army. What about you, kid?"

"Oh, uh," you say, "I just wanted to get away from California, see what else was out there. That's it."

"You and me both," Peter says, clapping you (somewhat painfully) on the back.

You reach the end of the sharecropper farms. To the left the road continues, and just ahead is (surprise surprise) more dusty houses, followed by a stretch of nothing but a whole lot of sand and dirt, speckled with some of the hardy desert plants you've become very familiar with over the past month or so. After that is Freeside. You can see the giant sign from here. It's not lit up yet (after all it's fucking ass o'clock in the morning) but even from here you can see the giant arrow dangling from the top of the sign, supported by a bunch of wires that you're pretty sure is a safety violation of some sort.

"Let's cut through the desert," you say.

Jen and Peter just nod, taking the lead as you all step off the road and walk past the old houses. The ground crunches beneath your boots, tiny clouds of dust puffing up with every step you three take. Distantly, you can hear the faint echoes of people shouting (probably in Freeside) and, farther off, the occasional crack of gunfire. Someone must be fighting somewhere. You hope it's no one you know.

"So, this brother of yours," Peter says, breaking the silence between you three, "You sure he's gonna be cool with a bunch of NCR troops waltzing in and talking to him."

"He's my  _brother_ ," you say, "Besides, he fucking loves to talk. The hard part is getting him to shut the hell up."

 They both laugh at this, and the three of you remain silent until you've crossed the bare stretch of earth and are standing in front of Freeside's gate. It's got some sort of weird colored sheets of something (maybe metal, maybe wood) set up around the top, like that makes it look more appealing, or something. All in all, it's a shitty rusted gate surrounded by shitty makeshift walls.

"After you," Jen says as the gate screeches open.

You notice the group of people, all men with identical haircuts and leather jackets, glaring at you a ways off, and you do your best to not look at them. When the gate is finally done opening and making that godawful, high-pitched scraping sound of rusted metal against rusted metal, you, Jen, and Peter duck inside. The gate slams shut almost immediately after you.

Freeside is exactly as much of a shitty-looking slum as you'd expected. The roads are cracked and filthy, several buildings have toppled over, leaving just the occasional, skeletal pieces of wall standing. Piles of rubble lie here and there, the largest clustered around the collapsed buildings. One one side of the street is a row of mostly-intact buildings, and while the first one has a shattered window, no door, and is missing several bricks on the second floor, the building after that is in pretty good shape, relatively speaking. It's got a large sign, jutting a bit from the wall so as to be more noticeable. It says MICK & RALPH'S in bright, neon letters. Probably a store or something.

Peter beckons you both to keep moving, and you begin to walk along the road, casting a few wary glances at the locals. What few you can see are giving you all dirty looks. None of them look very well-off; they all have faces smudged with grime, their clothes are tattered, and some are only wearing rags stitched into the vague shape of clothes. Only one of them, a ghoul sitting and leaning against the building next to Mick & Ralph's, seems pretty indifferent to you three, and gives you a polite, acknowledging nod as you pass. As you reach the intersection (which really shouldn't be called that, since two of the four directions the road goes are blocked) you can feel the hostile stares of the locals, making the hairs on the back of your neck prickle. Peter is brushing his finger against the bit of metal surrounding the trigger of his gun, though thankfully not on the trigger itself.

Jen places an arm on his. "Steady," she says softly, "Let's not give them more of a reason to hate us."

"We've just got to get to the Mormon Fort, talk to Kankri, and get out," you say, heading off to the right. "Look, you can see it from here."

Jen and Peter hurry after you. Up ahead are the walls of the fort the Followers have set up shop. It's sturdy and boxy, and while some of the bricks are cracked here and there, it looks pretty good for a fort that was considered old even before the Great War. You speed up, giving nervous glances to the old, boarded up shops and crumbling, hollowed-out cars you pass.

"Stay close to us," Jen murmurs to you, "Freeside's a dangerous place."

It comes as a huge relief when you finally, after rounding two more corners and awkwardly avoiding the suspicious glares of a few more locals, see the wooden gate of the old fort.

"C'mon, let's get this over with," you say, walking over to the gates as fast as you can.

Upon entering, you find that the interior of the fort is more or less what you expected. At the entrance is a row of sandbags, behind which are a few people that you assume are hired guards, considering the guns they're all carrying. Most of them are sitting around or chatting idly. All around the other three walls are several tents that were probably white when they were made, but are now a dirty grayish-brown color. Stacks of supply crates and barrels are beside each tent or shoved into whatever extra space along the wall there is. You can't see any patients, but from the occasional cough or groan you can assume they're inside the tents. Followers are scattered here and there, some hurrying from tent to tent, others inspecting the supplies, some just standing around and talking.

When the door creaks shut behind you, several people look up, including the guards. One immediately gets to her feet and moves her rifle into a less relaxed position.

"State your name and business," she says.

"Privates Yuan, Moreau, and Vantas," Jen replies, raising her hands defensively, "We wish for the assistance of one of your doctors."

The guard's eyes narrow. "Vantas?" she echoes, "That you, shorty?"

You bristle a little at the nickname--shit's worse than being called 'kid'--but swallow down your indignance and nod. "Yes, ma'am. Karkat Vantas."

"Huh, you're Insufferable's brother, aren't you?" the guard says, lowering her weapon and relaxing. "I guess you're here to see him, then. Go on through, he should be somewhere in the back."

"Thank you," Peter says.

They begin to move forward, but you hold up and arm and stop them. "Wait," you say, "Can you guys just stay here by the entrance? I want to talk to Kankri alone. Because of the whole top-secret thing."

Peter looks slightly annoyed, but Jen merely nods. "We'll wait here," she says, "Don't take too long; I don't think these Followers will take a couple of NCR soldiers loitering in their fort too well."

"Alright," you say, "I'll be back as soon as I can."

With that, you walk off in the direction the guard had said. It doesn't take you too long to find him. Two people seem to be having a very heated (and somewhat one-sided) debate in front of one of the tents along the back wall. The closest one has his back to you, but you'd recognize that thick brown hair anywhere. It's a slightly neater version of yours.

The tall, bespectacled blonde guy Kankri is talking to looks up as you approach. "Mind telling me why a smaller version of you in NCR armor is headed this way?" he asks.

"What...?" your brother turns to follow Blondie's gaze, and his eyes widen as his eyes meet yours. "Karkat! What on Earth are you doing here?"

"Looking for you, numbnuts," you say, "Hope you weren't doing anything important, because I need to talk to you. And no, it can't wait. I need to get me and my NCR buddies out of here before we get shot by the trigger-happy locals."

Kankri gives you a haughty look that you instantly recognize as the face he makes when he's being particularly stubborn. "Karkat, while I do not mean to invalidate you coming all the way out here to speak with me, I must ask you to wait. Arcade and I were in the middle of a very important discussion--"

"No, Kankri, it's fine," Blondie, whose name is apparently Arcade (what the fuck), says quickly, "We can talk about this later."

"Are you sure? Because I think we were making a lot of progress in our debate over socioeconomics--"

" _It's fine_ ," Arcade says emphatically, "Go see what your brother wants."

Kankri nods briskly. "I'll find a time to educate you about this matter later. Now, Karkat, what is it you want?"

You notice, out of the corner of your eyes, as Arcade mouths  _thank you_ to you and absconds as quickly as he can. You decide right there that you kind of like that guy. You quickly turn your attention back to Kankri, who's staring at you expectantly. God, he's still wearing that red turtleneck underneath his white labcoat thing.

"Is there somewhere we can talk in private?" you ask.

Kankri raises an eyebrow. God, you hate it when he gives you that look. "I'm sure whatever you wish to say to me can be said in front of my cohorts."

"No, this  _really_ can't," you growl, "It's kind of really fucking important that no one overhears this."

Kankri lets out a world-weary,  _oh the nonsense I have to put up with_ sigh that really, really makes you want to punch him right in the mouth. "If you insist," he says, "This way."

He leads you to one of the square buildings that sit in each corner of the fort. It's kind of musty and dark in there, but as he leads you up the narrow steps and into a slightly better lit room, you decide it's secure enough.

"This is where I sleep," he says, answering a question you never asked, "Please, sit." He gestures to the little chair in front of a small, rickety desk. You do as he says, mostly due to how fucking tired your legs are after hiking over here. Kankri sits down on the nearby bed. "Now, what's this about?"

You press your lips together. Christ, this is hard to admit. "I... need your help," you say, lamely.

There's a pause. "With what?" Kankri prompts you.

"I can't say the specifics," you say, "But basically one of my superior officers gave me a job and I have no idea what I'm doing."

"Karkat, while I have studied the topic extensively, I don't consider myself an expert on matters pertaining to the military--"

"Will you shut up and let me talk?!" you snap, "This isn't a normal job, okay? I was handed a guy with a lot of psychological problems, like needs-an-actual-therapist level problems, and I'm expected to know what to do with him. Officer Peixes seems convinced I can help this guy, and I don't know what she thinks I can do because I feel pretty fucking useless, and--"

"Hold on," Kankri says, cutting you off. "Psychological damage, you say? What kind are you talking about, exactly?"

"I don't fucking know," you say, "I'm not a fucking doctor! He's got a shitton of problems, and I don't know how to deal with any of them! His moral code is shot to shit, he had a fucking flashback or something when I tried to talk to him about his memories or whatever, not to mention he's been hardwired into being a killing machine and he hates everyone at the base except for me for some reason, and..." you trail off, "I'm just so  _bad_ at this."

Kankri watches you thoughtfully as you speak, and when you finish, he leans forwards and says, "You've captured a legionary, yes?"

You stare at him in shock. "Wh... how did you...?"

"It was obvious from the description you gave me," Kankri says, "Plus, the inner workings of Caesar's Legion and the effects it has on its soldiers is not exactly a secret to us."

"Have you talked to any legionaries?" you say incredulously.

"We've spoken with several escaped slaves," Kankri replies, "And they've told us quite a lot about the inner workings of the Legion."

"Then why the fuck wouldn't you take than information to the NCR?"

"We try not to get involved," Kankri says, giving you a disapproving look, "And do you truly believe that the NCR doesn't know as much as we do? If I recall correctly, several of the more experienced officers and rangers even know of Caesar's origins."

You blink. "How the fuck do you know this stuff?"

"You'd be surprised how much we Followers overhear," Kankri says in that infuriatingly smug tone you're so familiar with.

You groan. "Do you have any fucking advice, or did I come all the way out here for nothing?"

Kankri purses his lips. "I believe I may have a few things that might help," he says. Without giving you any more than that, he gets up and makes his way over to the bookshelf. He brushes his finger against the surprisingly well-kept spines of the old books, apparently searching for something. Finally, he lets out a triumphant "aha!" and pulls a thick, red book from the shelf, then walks over to you and drops it into your lap. "Here."

You stare down at the title, printed in large, gold, and incredibly boring letters. "'A History of Ancient Rome?' The fuck is this gonna do?"

"Caesar deliberately keeps his soldiers oblivious to the basis his society has in Roman culture," Kankri explains, "Showing this to that, er, friend of yours may help. If you can prove that Caesar lied about one thing, you can help him realize that he was taught more false information as well."

"He won't believe this," you say, "Those guys think Caesar is a god."

"A son of a god," Kankri says, "Specifically, Mars."

"Do I look like I give a shit?" you snap, "Either way, it's gonna take more than a  _book_ to get him to see the bullshit the Legion's been feeding him for what it is."

"I know," Kankri replies, "Caesar's built a cult around himself to stay in power. If his people were to realize that their religion is a fabrication that was specifically made to ensure their obedience, the entire society would crumble. You know, cut off the head and the body will die, that sort of thing. Breaking what your prisoner has been forced to believe will be difficult, but I think it's possible."

"You would," you mutter, not loud enough for your brother to hear you. 

"Can you think of anything you may be able to use to your advantage? You mentioned flashbacks before," Kankri says.

"No, those were like, 'I did fucked up shit and I'm proud of that because Caesar told me to and I'm a little brainwashed pawn, but now I'm suddenly feeling bad about it, what do.'"

"Well, then, there you go," Kankri says, "Force him to explore that. It won't be easy, and I doubt some of the damage will be completely repaired, but you can at least undo the conditioning."

You frown. Your brother has a point. Eridan had been adamant about not caring at all for the first ten years of his life, or what happened to his family, despite his body language saying the complete opposite. You've never dealt with someone so completely in denial, though.

Your brother interrupts your thoughts. "I could give you some more texts, if you like," he says, "Pardon my saying this, but I don't believe the NCR puts enough value in educating its troops. I admit that the Legion's tactics are predictable, and rely mostly on the sheer number of troops, but having only the higher level soldiers know about its inner workings seems very inefficient to me, and--"

" _Thank you_ , Kankri," you say quickly, "And no, I don't want any more fucking books. This one's heavy enough as it is."

"I wasn't finished talking," Kankri says, annoyed.

"I know," you reply.

Kankri glares at you for a moment, then sighs and throws up his hands. "If you insist on being difficult, I won't argue. I'm too tired for that."

"That's a relief," you say, which earns you another affronted look, "What, is being a doctor really that exhausting?"

"I actually don't work with patients as much as I used to," Kankri admits, "I mostly do research now. My fellow doctors told me that I'd be more useful there, and I must admit, it's been extremely enlightening--"

"Yeah, I get it," you say. You're pretty sure that what the other Followers told Kankri was just a tactful method of getting him out of the way, but you keep that to yourself. You sigh, your pride really not wanting you to say what you're about to admit next. "...Thanks. For helping me. I... I don't know if this is going to work, but..."

Kankri raises one hand, and you fall silent. To your complete and utter surprise, he gives you an actual compassionate smile. Man, you haven't been on the receiving end of one of Kankri's "I'm Genuinely Trying to Reassure You and Not Being a Dick For Once" smiles in a long time.

"I think this will work itself out, in the end," he says, and for a moment you almost believe him. "Now, I think you should get on your way. Feel free to keep the book; I've read it plenty of times."

"Thanks," you say again.

Kankri gives you another smile, though this one is more like his usual smug self. "You should really visit again soon. I'd love to teach you more about the work us Followers do. Now come, I'll escort you out."

 

It figures that your luck runs out on your way back. You, Jen, and Peter are halfway to the Freeside gate when you get jumped. You honestly shouldn't have been surprised; Freeside is known for how violent and dangerous it is. Still, the three of you are caught completely off guard, exhausted from the trip out here even though you've only been gone for a few hours. You don't see the thugs coming until they're practically on top of you.

You see a sudden movement to your right, the flicker of light catching on something metallic, the vague blurry shape of a man, and then suddenly Peter lets out a startled and pained cry, and he's reeling backwards and oh shit, that is definitely blood coming from his mouth. That is a lot of blood.

Three men are standing in the mouth of an alley you hadn't notice before, all grinning like they just saw something hilarious. The one in front is wielding a lead pipe with fresh blood splattered on the tip, raising it above his head deliver another blow. Behind him, the other two are standing, one wielding a sledgehammer, the other a baseball bat. Shit.

"That's what we do to you NCR fucks," Pipe says, and then he strikes Peter again, and this time Peter falls, and falls hard, spitting out more blood and a couple of teeth. Pipe raises his weapon again, this time probably aiming to bash Peter's skull in, and you instinctively rush forward, forgetting that you're completely unarmed.

You dart between the thug and Peter, throwing up an arm without even thinking about it. You don't know what the fuck you were planning on doing, probably something dumb like catching the damn pipe, but it doesn't matter. What does matter is that you realize, a split second before the thug brings the pipe down on you, that, oh shit,  _that's your fucking injured arm_ , and then the thick metal weapon  _slams_ into your flesh and you hear a horrible, sickening crack, and something on your upper arm just  _ripped_ , and you scream as agony lances through you. You stumble to your knees, not noticing Peter getting to his feet beside you. you only vaguely register the sound of an assault rifle, which would normally be loud enough for you to feel it in your bones, but under the circumstances the pain is kind of blocking out everything else. Being hit with a Legion spear was  _nothing_ compared to this.

The next thing you're mostly aware of is someone seizing you by your good arm and hauling you to your feet, and you cry out in protest, but that someone braces you against their shoulder and now someone else is shouting. You force yourself to focus.

"... _The fuck were you thinking, Vantas?!_ " Jen is yelling, and she sounds  _terrified_ , " _You could have gotten yourself killed!_ "

You take a moment to remember how talking works. "'M sorry," you say.

"Like hell you are!" Jen yells, then, to Peter, she says, "You up to hauling his stupid ass back to McCarran?"

"Yeh," Peter says, and he sounds like he's having trouble talking, and when you look up at him you realize that oh, that's because he took a lead pipe to the face. His jaw is horribly swollen, and his mouth is bright red with blood. Some has poured over his beard, covering it in a jagged sheet of blood that stands out way too much from the color of his hair. "I thig I c'n tage 'im."

"Let's get the fuck out of here," Jen growls.

She picks up the book that you hadn't even noticed you'd dropped. You look over your shoulder as Peter hauls you towards the gate and see the corpses of the three thugs, their bodies practically torn apart with bullet wounds. At least Jen isn't as much of an idiot as you are.

You wish you were semiconscious again. Then, at least, you wouldn't have this entire long walk back to Camp McCarran to look forward to. God, the doctor's gonna be  _furious_.

You're pretty sure you just signed yourself up for another week or two of doing nothing but watching Eridan all day.

\---

Your name is Sollux Captor, and you're kind of freaking the fuck out.

Not that you're showing it. You keep up your usual, casual stride as you walk into the terminal building and up the broken escalator, even though your guts are churning with anxiety and you feel like you might throw up.  _Keep it cool, don't let anyone see how nervous you are. Don't look suspicious._

When Feferi had called you back into her office yesterday morning, you'd expecting something else, something that makes your heart flutter a little even now just from thinking about it. What you  _hadn't_ been expecting was her sitting down at her desk, looking you dead in the eyes and saying, in the most serious tone of voice you've ever heard her use, the two words that you've dreaded most for almost your entire miserable life.

"I know."

And so here you are, standing outside of her office and feeling so scared you're almost tempted to turn tail and flee, except this is Feferi, and you can't bring yourself to do that. Not with her. You raise one shaking hand and knock on the door.

She opens it almost right away, like she's been waiting there for you. She probably was. "C'mon in," she says, still using an uncharacteristically serious voice that makes your stomach flop with anxiety, "Sit down."

You do so, sitting opposite from her at her desk. The look she's giving you is blank, unreadable. You take a deep, shuddering breath, and force yourself to speak.

"What's this about, Feferi--I mean, ma'am," you say.

"We both know the answer to that," she replies, "Relax. I haven't told anyone."

"I can tell," you say, "Otherwise they'd be trying to kill me."

That makes her smile, and even such a brief grin makes you a little more at ease. "I suppose they would." The smile falls, and she pauses, her eyes closed as if she's thinking something over.

When she doesn't speak for almost two minutes, you break the silence. "What are you going to do?"

She looks up at you, and her gaze is so warm and compassionate that almost all of your anxiety instantly melts away. "I won't tell, if that's what you're worried about."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm scared of," you reply, "What I don't get is... why, though? Everyone else would've."

She smiles, big and wide and sympathetic and oh god you're so head over heels in love with her it's not even funny. "I haven't said anything," she says softly, "Because I like you, Sollux. And I can't ever imagine you being a danger to any of us."

Your heart does a backflip, while at the same time the uneasiness in the pit of your stomach grows. She doesn't know that. She can't be sure that you won't be a danger to everyone around you. But she also just said that she likes you and that's kind of hard to comprehend and your voice is hoarse as you speak.

"How... how did you know?" you rasp.

"I looked up your records before starting this project you're a part of, remember?" Feferi replies, "And I noticed some rather... odd things. Like how little data there is on your family. How reclusive you all are. The rather interesting note regarding your brother."

You wince. Mituna. His accident was part of the reason why you've been hiding this secret so well, guarding it from even your friends.

"Then I saw something in your medical records," Feferi goes on, "Specifically, the odd herbal mixture you take every morning. You do still do that, right?"

"Yeah," you say, your throat dryer than ever.

"It was a lot of guesswork and research from there, but eventually it just... fell into place, I guess," Feferi says. She looks at you, and her gaze is just so reassuring that for a moment you almost believe what she said about not telling anyone. But you know how dangerous believing that is. You don't want to go down that road again.

"So... what  _are_ you going to do?" you ask.

Feferi grins, all of her beautiful, perfect teeth on display. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I want to help you, Sollux. And I'll do everything in my power to do so."


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, 52 kudos and 6 bookmarks.
> 
> I can honestly say I did not expect that.

Your name is Eridan Ampora and you have no fucking idea what's taking Karkat so long to get here. Yesterday you'd been woken up by Peixes shoving the door to your cell open and excitedly (of course) telling you that you'd get a whole day to yourself. When you'd asked, all she'd said was that Karkat had something else he needed to do. You were a bit offended; what could he possibly have to do that's more important than visiting you? So Peixes had left you alone, which honestly surprised you given the amount of security you'd had before to make sure you didn't do something stupid. It's not like you're complaining; if their sudden decision to trust you more with being by yourself keeps you from spending another day knocked out on chems, then why not?

The problem is that sitting around in this fucking cell is really, really,  _really boring_.

Yesterday had mostly consisted of you lying around, reading Karkat's (admittedly kind of enjoyable, in a weird way) romance novels, sleeping, and... well, just sort of moping in general. And now you're sulking  _again_ , because Peixes said Karkat would be back today, and it's past breakfast, and he isn't here.

Is he not gonna come back? Oh fuck, what if they're done with you? What if they got whatever it is they wanted out of you and now they're leaving you here to die? It would be fitting, you think sourly, for someone as big of a fuckup as you to die alone and forgotten in some dingy little cell. You were stupid enough to be captured, and so you deserve to die without dignity, in the hands of the NCR. And yet you can't bring yourself to end it now, like you would have had you been left alone for even a minute just a few days ago. That sort of death had seemed so honorable before, and now it feels like cheating somehow, like taking the easy way out. Why should you do something like that if you could try and escape instead? An alive legionary is better than a dead one, right? And even if you got caught again, at least you would have  _tried_. 

Yeah, you know that the Legion taught you all to die instead of being captured so that no one could torture information out of you. You get that. But they haven't been torturing you. Hell, maybe you could get information out of them. Maybe Karkat, if you pressed him... no, he'd probably see through that. Besides, he said himself that he's new. He wouldn't know anything important.

Peixes, on the other hand... maybe you could get something out of her, suck up to her a little bit, pretend you're going along with whatever batshit insane plan she has for you... That might actually work. Then, at least, if you managed to make it back to the Legion, you'd have something of value to give that would make this whole shitty ordeal worthwhile.

 Damn, with a plan this good, you should be made a fucking frumentarii. Or something.

...You really want to get out of this cell.

It's probably an hour or so after breakfast when your cell door is suddenly unlocked with a clang. You jump, startled, and stare as it's swung open.

"Took you long enough," you snap irritably, "Seriously, what..." you trail off, eyes wide, as you see who's standing in the doorway. "Oh. You're not Kar."

"I'm afraid not," Maryam says.

Peixes is holding the door open, smiling at you. Does she ever stop smiling? "Guess what, Eridan! Since Karkat can't make it here today, Kanaya's gonna spend some time with you instead! Isn't that great?"

You blink. "Why can't Kar be here? You said he would."

Kanaya raises an eyebrow. "It's nice to see you again, too," she says.

You glare at her. "Shut up," you snap. You look back at Peixes. "Where's Kar?"

Instead of answering your question, Peixes gives you a sharp, stern look that honestly scares you a little. Fuck, apparently she can make expressions other than smiling. "You are going to be civil with Kanaya, are we clear? Unless you want me to have Sollux sit with you instead."

Shit, isn't he the guy with the freaky two-colored eyes? The really smug one that talked tech nonsense at you in what you're certain was a deliberate attempt to piss you off? "Fuck no," you say quickly.

"Well then," Peixes says, the smile back as suddenly as it left. " Sollux and I have business to attend to, anyway. Kanaya, if there's anything you need, have one of the guards send a message along to me, alright?"

"Understood," Kanaya says. She hesitates for a moment. "Feferi, if you don't mind me asking, what are you and Sollux--"

"I'd rather not discuss this just yet," Peixes interrupts.

"I apologize. I was merely concerned for Sollux's well being; he seemed very tense yesterday, especially so after his meeting with you," Kanaya says.

"I'll let him decide whether or not to tell you," Peixes says. She turns her attention back to you. "So! Back to the subject at hand."

You want to demand to be left alone for another day, to not have to sit with Maryam, but you stop yourself. Complaining about this won't win you any points if you want to get on Peixes' good side. Maryam weirds you the fuck out, though. She speaks so properly and clearly, like she's somehow able to capitalize the first letter of each word vocally. The bookish way she speaks kind of reminds you of how most of your fellow legionaries do. Except when they do it, it's cool, like something out of an old fantasy novel. When she does it, it makes you uncomfortable and you have no idea why. Something's prickling at the back of your mind, something that brings up vague images of whips and blood and tears, so you shove that train of thought aside as quickly as you can. No point in mulling over how fucking weird this woman is.

You realize, a little too late, that Peixes has been talking while you were thinking. You tune back in just as she's apparently finished asking you a question, and now she's looking at you expectantly.

"Can you repeat that?" you ask.

"I said, will it be alright if Kanaya visits you tomorrow, as well? Just until noon," she says, "Karkat needs rest, and the doctor wants to make sure he's good to go before sending him anywhere."

"Wait, doctors?!" you say, alarmed, "The fuck happened to Kar?"

"Calm down," Peixes says soothingly, "His arm just got a bit messed up while he was out yesterday. He'll be okay, though. It's gonna take him a little while longer to recover, that's all."

You sneer. "That ain't makin me feel any better, y'know."

Feferi gives you a look that's bordering on ecstatic, which completely mystifies you. Instead of saying what the fuck she's so pleased about, she looks at Kanaya and says, "I'll leave to both to get settled, then! Remember what I told you, Kanaya. And Eridan, be polite. See you both later!"

She shuts the heavy door without waiting for a response, leaving you and Maryam alone together.

There's a long, tense silence between the two of you. You stare at the ground between your feet, feeling Maryam's gaze on you like you're sitting in the middle of a spotlight. The fuck is this lady's problem? Eventually, you hear Maryam sigh, and she walks over to the chair, her footsteps oddly light for someone wearing thick, standard-issue boots. You finally force yourself to look up at her as she sits down (in Karkat's chair) and you're not surprised at all to see her staring at you, her gaze discerning and piercing in a way that makes you extremely self-conscious all of a sudden.

You can't help but get defensive from the way she's (judging you) looking at you. "What?!" you snap.

Her eyebrows rise ever so slightly. "There's no need to be hostile, you know," she says, "I'm not trying to antagonize you."

"Could'a fooled me," you mutter.

Maryam's mouth twitches into the faintest ghost of a smile. The hell is she finding so funny? "I've heard interesting things about you from Karkat," she says.

That grabs your attention. "What kinds a things?"

She crosses her legs, folds her hands onto her lap, and gives you a smile that feels much more genuine, and at the same time infuriating. "I'm not one to gossip," she says.

You glower at her. "You're kind of a bitch."

"Are you always this rude?"

"You ain't worth bein polite to," you sneer.

Her smile is gone, replaced once again with that cold, sharp look. "You know, I have many places I would much rather be right now. I agreed to take on this particular task of watching you while Karkat is incapacitated out of a desire to help Feferi, as well as to satisfy my own curiosity. This is technically my day off; I could by listening to the radio and working on my latest project, and yet I'm here, watching an imprisoned legionary who insists upon being unpleasant with someone who's going out of their way to help them."

"You assholes ain't helpin me," you say, "I don't even know why you're keepin me alive! All you're doin is keepin me locked up in here like some kind a fuckin pet. An Kar's alright, but I ain't got any want to talk to the rest a you NCR bastards.  _Especially_ not an NCR woman, talkin to me like we're fuckin equals. When Caesar takes Hoover Dam he's gonna enslave the lot a you, an it'll serve you right, playin soldier like you're a man." You pause to take a breath; you hadn't been aware of how loud your voice had been getting there; you'd almost started shouting.

Maryam is giving you an odd look, her head tilted slightly to the side. "Is that what you truly think?" she asks, "Or are those words that others have put into your mouth?"

You scowl and open your mouth to reply, then pause. Of course that's what you think; granted, the Legion taught you that, but the Legion is right about everything. So why...? She's wrong. She's a woman, she's an NCR woman, she is completely and totally wrong and you don't have to listen to the bullshit she's spewing out of her mouth. You've seen how women live in the Legion, and it works just fine. Mars himself told Caesar how his society should be run. It makes sense. Men fight, women act as supporting roles. Of course Maryam thinks it's wrong; she's NCR, she wouldn't understand. She hasn't seen how well it works.

Of course you believe what the Legion's taught you.

 

_The woman kicks and screams curses as the two men holding her arms haul her to the center of camp. She doesn't stop fighting, not even as the men force her to kneel in front of Lanius. The Legate towers over her, a terrifying figure clad in red and gold, the steel glinting in the fiery light of the setting sun. The mask, forged in the image of the god Mars, is both expressionless and imposing as Lanius stares down at her._

_She still has drying blood on her hands, blood that is not her own. She killed the centurion that had claimed her as his own, that had lain with her and forced her to bear his children. His body still lies in his tent, torn and bloody from the twenty-six stab wounds to his chest that she had given him. She had overpowered a centurion armed with nothing but a carving knife, stolen his machete, and made a break for the exit._

_It had been a foolhardy act, doomed from the start. The Fort is heavily guarded and nearly impossible to enter or leave without someone seeing you. She'd had little hope of escaping, and yet she'd tried anyway._

_She'd managed to take down three fully armored legionaries before she was overpowered._

_Now she is kneeling before the Legate, and despite staring into the mask of a man as terrifying and bloodthirsty as he, she is unafraid. One eye is swollen shut, she is bleeding from a cut on her cheek and countless more on her torso and limbs, and yet she is grinning into the face of the Monster of the East._

_He calls her a foolish whore and orders her to be executed, in front of the other slaves, to be tied to a post and lashed until she bleeds out. She is dragged to a stake in the middle of the arena, and the other slaves are forced to gather around, watching the woman with tired, frightened eyes. You stand at the front of the crowd, under orders to prevent any of the slaves from trying to intervene. And so you watch, your throat dry and your heart pounding as her executioner approaches her, a whip in his hand. He asks her if she has any last words._

_The woman laughs. "Yes, I do," she says, her voice venomous and strong, "You're trying to make an example out of me, when my only crime was trying to be free. You're only creating a martyr. And I'm not gonna be the last," she says, gazing at the slaves gathered around her, "More will come. And you_ _hellspawn will get what you deserve." She grins, and her voice carries as she shouts, "The Burned Man lives!"_

_The name sends a jolt of terror through you, and you glance around nervously as the muttering voices of the slaves ripple through the crowd. The executioner bares his teeth, raises his whip, and brings it down in a vicious arc. The woman doesn't scream, even as the leather tears into her back and blood pours from the wounds it leaves._

_When she's slumped onto the ground, pale and panting, most of her blood splattered around her, she gives her executioner one last scathing look, raises her middle finger, and rasps, "Fuck you."_

_One more blow is all it takes to silence her for good._

 

Someone's shaking you. Your eyes snap open and you let out a ragged gasp, flailing at whoever it is. They catch your wrist and you struggle; you're vaguely aware that your mouth is moving and you're saying something, but what's more important is that someone is trying to hold you still and you can still hear the whip gouging into the woman's back and you can hear her rasping breaths as she bites back scream after scream (the Burned Man lives) and you can see Lanius towering over the woman like a terrifying effigy of Mars and you can smell her blood and see the setting sun painting the sky in shades of red and orange like it's on fire ( _the Burned Man lives_ ) and you're  _scared_ and

" _Eridan_!"

Whoever it is has got you by the shoulders now and is holding you, pressing you close and it's not right, it's not  _him_ , and you manage to get yourself under control just enough to shove them off. You sit there for several moments, slumped over and panting heavily like you've just sprinted across half of the Mojave, and you have no idea what's going on except you're fucking terrified and confused and someone won't stop saying your name.

Finally, after several minutes of breathing in harsh gasps and trying not to pass out, you manage to calm down somewhat, and you come back to reality. The terror fades (a little) as you remind yourself that you're not at the Fort, you're not watching a woman die, you're in a cell at Camp McCarran, and oh yeah, Kanaya Maryam is here, too.

You force yourself to look up. Maryam is standing way too fucking close to you for your liking. She looks concerned, like she wants to help you but isn't quite sure how. Probably because you shoved her. You glad she isn't trying to hold you anymore. Being held is the last thing you want right now, not by her. Maybe someone else (a very particular someone) but _definitely_ not by her. You take a deep, shaky breath, and only then realize that you're shaking. Your cheeks are damp, and oh fucking hell, you've been crying. You wipe at your face furiously with one hand.

"Are you alright?" Maryam asks.

"...Yeah," you croak, and then you clear your throat because  _wow_ that was not a dignified sound in the slightest. "Yeah. I'm good."

There's a long pause. "Did you know the woman's name?" Maryam eventually asks.

Fuck, you'd been talking the entire time, hadn't you? "...No," you admit, "What does it matter, though? She was a fuckin slave."

"It sounded like she mattered to you," Maryam says.

You glare at her, then sigh. "Look, Maryam, I--"

"You said something about a Burned Man," Maryam says, interrupting you, "What did that mean?"

Your heart skips a beat. You sit bolt upright and stare at her, your eyes wide. "It's just a fuckin dumb legend the slaves tell each other," you snarl, more from fear than anger, "The Burned Man ain't alive."

"So he's real, then?" Maryam asks.

"I, fuck, he's," you stammer, "We're not allowed to--he's dead. He's fuckin dead, that's all that matters. I... we can't say...  _damnatio memoriae_ ," you say, helplessly.

Maryam blinks. "I'm afraid I don't know what that means. Is that Latin?"

You bury your face in your hands. "Just... shut up about it, alright? I ain't gonna talk about this. I just freaked out a little, that's all. Drop it."

Maryam purses her lips. "You should tell Karkat," she says softly.

"An why the fuck would I do that?"

"It may help," she says.

You frown. Maybe... Maybe it would be okay if you told Karkat. He'd listen better than Maryam, probably. Talking about shit like this did make you feel a bit better before. If you talk to Karkat instead of some weird woman you barely know...

Not that you're gonna admit that you're silently agreeing with her.

"I said drop it," you growl.

"Fair enough," Maryam says. She sits back down in the chair, and while you can tell she wants to continue asking you about whatever the fuck just happened, she thankfully doesn't pry any further. 

You have to gather up the courage to admit what you're about to say. "...I think you were right."

"Hm?"

"You were right, about... about words bein put into my mouth or whatever," you say, your face flushing. "I... you were right."

Maryam gives you a long, unreadable look, then nods. "Glad to hear it."

You rest your chin on your hand as you two fall into another uncomfortable silence. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Maryam pick up one of Karkat's books and begin to flip through it. You're too worked up right now to nap or try to read. So you stare at the door, desperately wishing Karkat was here.

\---

Your name is Feferi Peixes and you have a headache. You're sitting in your office, your head in your arms as you slump onto the desk. When you joined the army, this wasn't where you'd expected to end up. Not here, not with a million things on your plate and a position you weren't ready for and a huge secret looming over you. All you'd wanted was to help people, and now here you are, in really fucking hot water with your superiors, trying no to break down and cry like a five-year-old because this is  _too much to handle right now_. 

You only got promoted thanks to nepotism. Your mom pulled a few strings here and there to ensure you got a nice, safe job, away from the front lines. You don't want to be here. You'd rather be at Hoover Dam, or even Camp Forlorn Hope. Yes, even the latter, which most people consider to be a death sentence. At least you could try to make a visible difference there, and if you were floundering, no one could blame you. Much.

This project is so important to you. You want to show people here that you're useful, you want to show them that you deserve this job, and now Karkat's gotten injured and your superiors are furious. You're treading on thin ice, and to top it all off, you know something that could get you and your friend killed if someone were to find out.

(why are you keeping this secret? Is he really just a friend?)

You sit up with a jolt as the door to your office clicks open, relaxing as Sollux pokes his head in.

"Hey," he says, awkwardly. "Uh..."

You can't help but smile. "Are you ready to go?"

He rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I... I didn't take my meds this morning--the herb stuff--so it'll work. I'm bringing a dose with me, though," he says quickly, "It'll show by the time we get back if I don't."

You nod. "Good idea. I'm gonna assume it wears off slower than it kicks in, otherwise we're gonna be stuck out there for hours."

Sollux sighs, but you see the faint hint of a smile, a glimpse of his imperfect, adorable crooked teeth. "Yeah, it starts working fast. God, this is probably the dumbest thing I've ever agreed to..."

You get up from your desk and walk over to him. You place a reassuring hand on his shoulder and grin, forcing your own doubts and fears aside for the sake of your friend(?).

"I know it's dangerous," you say, "But it'll be fine. I picked a safe spot. You head out first; it's probably better if we're not seen leaving together."

"You sure they won't notice...?"

"We'll be back before dinner," you reply. You give his shoulder a pat. "Now get going. I'll meet up with you there; gimme about thirty minutes or so."

You can tell Sollux has his doubts, hell, you do too. But you need to see this, and you know he needs someone to confide in, to show after hiding what he is for so long. 

You are afraid of many things at the moment, but right now, what you're doing with Sollux, is not one of them. You'd trust him with your life. You can only hope he can say the same about you.

\---

Your name is Sollux Captor, and someone knows what you are, what you've been hiding from everybody for so long, what your dad taught you to never reveal to anyone, under any circumstances. Someone knows that you're not quite human, that you're a freak, that your family was once a part of the Master's army, generations ago.

Feferi Peixes knows that you're a psyker, and for some reason, you're okay with that.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take a shot for every time someone swears in this fic. Except don't, because I don't want to be responsible for someone dying of alcohol poisoning.

It turned out that the fracture in your arm actually isn't that bad. Nurse Brooks, who had begrudgingly agreed to fix you up on account of him being in on your assignment, explained that you'd only fractured one of the bones in your forearm, instead of both. He'd given you Med-X for the pain, then promptly moved the pieces back into place, binding your arm with a splint and securing it with a sling. However, even with how relatively minor the break is, Brooks had told you it'd take six weeks to heal, at least. You were horrified.

Brooks had ignored your furious complaints and told you that it was your own damn fault for going to Freeside in the first place, and while you kind of agreed with him, there was no way you were going to let that asshole know that. So he'd turned his attention to your reopened gash, and you'd sat there, silently seething as he looked over how bad the damage was.

It was worse than you'd thought. Jen had taken off her facewrap and tied it tightly around the wound in an attempt to prevent you from bleeding all over the place, but by the time she and Peter had gotten you back to camp the fabric had been soaked through with blood. As Brooks unwrapped the makeshift bandages and inspected the gash, you'd seen why. Not only had you ripped open the stitches, but the muscle had been torn as well, making it just as damaged as it had been when you'd been hit by that spear. It hurt like a motherfucker, even with the painkillers, and you bit your lip hard enough to draw blood as Brooks applied disinfectant to it and stitched it up again.

Peter had been somewhat luckier than you. It hadn't taken much to ease the swelling on his face, and his bitten tongue had stopped bleeding by the time you made it back. His missing teeth couldn't be saved, but he'd taken it in stride, saying that he could get metal implants that would look fucking badass. You silently berated yourself for getting him into this mess purely for your own sake. It's your fault for getting him injured; if you weren't such a fucking idiot this would never have happened.

After Peter had left, all you could do was lie down on your cot and try to rest, despite the dull, throbbing ache from your wounds and the self-loathing thoughts circling around in your mind. Brooks, thankfully, had left you alone to sleep, and you must have fallen asleep at some point, because later you opened your eyes and found that it was suddenly the next morning.

And now here you are, sitting up on your cot and rubbing rheum from your eyes with your good hand. You blink and look around as your eyes adjust to the light; Brooks is sitting at his desk, his attention entirely focused on his beat-up terminal. You clear your throat loudly.

"What is it, Vantas," he says flatly, without looking at you. It's more of a statement than a question.

"What time--"

"Ten o'clock," he replies, cutting you off. You glare at him. What the fuck is this guy's problem?

You decide it's probably best not to ask the nurse that's in charge of keeping you from fucking your arm up even more why he's such an asshole. Instead you sigh and slouch a little, scratching absently at the splint on your arm. It's kind of itchy, which you just know is gonna drive you nuts. You hiss a little as a burst of pain flares up your arm. That prompts Brooks to actually glance over his shoulder, and when he sees the look on your face, he sighs and gets up, fetching something from a nearby shelf before walking over to you.

"The fuck are you doing?" you ask.

"You need another dose of Med-X," he replies. He's got a needle in his hand, and you sit there patiently as he daubs your good arm with a sharp-smelling bit of wet cloth. You grit your teeth as he injects the painkiller into your arm, and shoot him a dirty look as he wraps a small, thin bandage around the tiny hole.

He glances at you and raises an eyebrow. "What?"

You scowl. "You have the worst fucking bedside manner I've ever seen," you say instinctively. Well, there goes your plan to be polite to this guy.

Brooks sighs again. "If you want sympathy, go to the Followers. I'm here to make sure you guys don't keel over. That's it."

"Christ," you mutter, but neither of you say any more.

He just rolls his eyes and returns to his desk, while you sit there on your cot and wonder if you should ask for permission to leave this fucking tent or not. Barely five minutes pass when you are blessedly interrupted by someone suddenly stepping into the entrance, casting a long shadow over the tent in the early morning light. To your surprise, Kanaya is standing there, looking somewhat hesitant as her eyes scan the tent. When her gaze falls upon you, she relaxes slightly and gives you a small smile.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," she says.

Brooks looks around at her. "You here to send Vantas off?"

"I'm afraid so."

He grunts. Glancing at you, he says, "Check in with me before you go to bed. And I swear to God, if you so much as think about doing anything with that arm, I'm going to skin you alive. Got it?"

"Sure," you say. Brooks glares at you for a moment, then goes back to whatever he's doing on his terminal. You look over at Kanaya. "So, what's up?"

She walks over to join you beside your cot. "Peixes left me instructions about our little project. She said that once you're given permission to leave the medical tent, you are to go straight back to work. That's what's happening now, by the way."

"Yeah, I got that," you say. "...Wait a minute. What do you mean she 'left' you instructions?"

Kanaya shrugs. "She left sometime yesterday and hasn't returned yet," she says, "Sollux is gone, as well."

You blink. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Are they allowed to do that?" you ask.

"No," Kanaya replies. She motions for you to get up. "We should get moving; it's not wise to leave E... our project alone for too long."

You glance at Brooks, who just waves a hand at you absently, his eyes still fixed on his screen. You take that as his way of saying 'get the fuck out of here.' You stand up and stretch, barely remembering not to move your broken arm. Kanaya walks off at once, and you have to hurry to catch up.

"Wait," you say, "You can't just leave me hanging like that!"

"What do you mean?" Kanaya says.

"You can't tell me that one of my friends and the woman he's head-over-heels for, who just happens to be a fucking officer, went fucking AWOL and then drop it like it's nothing!" you snap.

"I never said they went AWOL," Kanaya replies, "Just that they left and haven't returned yet."

"Why aren't you worried about this?!" you demand.

"In the note Feferi left me," Kanaya says, "She explained that she might be gone a while, and not to fret if she and Sollux are a bit late. Besides, what good would worrying do?"

She kind of has a point, but that doesn't mean you're satisfied. "So no one knows where they are, they fucking  _snuck out of camp_ , and they could be getting themselves killed out wherever the fuck they are, and you're  _okay with this_?"

"When did I say I was?" Kanaya says, "There's nothing we can do about this. We're not the only ones that noticed they were gone; there's a small search party combing the nearby ruins right now."

You hiss out a sigh between grit teeth. "Fuck. I'm gonna  _kill_ them when they get back. Assuming they're not already dead."

"I'm sure you will, if Peixes' superiors don't get there first."

"Well this is fucking fantastic. Anything else you want to heap on me to make this day worse, or are you done?" you say.

Kanaya gives you a look that makes you feel slightly ashamed. "I'm just passing along the message."

"Sorry."

Both of you are silent as you enter the terminal building, making a beeline for the hallway that leads to where Eridan is being kept. When you finally make it to the door to his cell block, Kanaya places a hand on your shoulder and stops you.

"Karkat," she says, "I just want to warn you that he may be a bit... unsettled today."

"Huh?"

"I was with him yesterday, and earlier this morning," Kanaya says, "He didn't react very well to most of what I had to say."

You blink. "How so?"

"I'll let him explain," Kanaya replies.

"Alright, I guess," you mutter, reaching for the door handle. You pause. "Wait.  _Shit,_ I forgot the book Kankri gave me--"

"It's outside his cell," Kanaya says, "Peixes mentioned in her note that it would be important, so I fetched it this morning."

You sigh in relief. "You're a fucking lifesaver, Kanaya."

She smiles softly. "Go on now. I wouldn't keep him waiting long."

"Knowing him, he's probably pouting over someone not paying attention to him," you mutter.

Kanaya laughs. "Probably. I'll see you at dinner, then?"

"Yeah. If Peixes and Sollux aren't back by then..."

"Karkat," Kanaya says, "There is nothing we can do about this. We're not in a position to go out searching for them ourselves."

"I know," you growl, "I just... fuck, those  _idiots_ , I can't believe they did that..."

"Now is not the time to get worked up over this," Kanaya says firmly. "Now go. I have drills I need to get to, and I'm already late as is."

You two quickly exchange goodbyes as Kanaya walks off and you duck through the rusted door. Johnson and Anders look up at you as you approach.

"Maryam left this for you," Johnson says, nodding at a familiar, thick red book lying on the floor beside the cell door.

"Thanks," you say. You bend down and try to pick up the heavy book. With only one usable arm, this is rather difficult. Still, you manage (barely) and haul both the book and yourself into the cell, thankful that Johnson was considerate enough to hold open the door for you.

Here goes nothing.

\---

You're roused out of your doze by the sound of a door creaking open. It's not your cell door, but you recognize it. It's the old beat-up door that is the only exit from your little cell block. You open one eye as you hear voices. Huh. It's one of the guards.

"Maryam left this for you," the guard says.

"Thanks," says a much more familiar (much more welcome) voice. You feel a rush of relief. Karkat. He's actually showing up today, thank God. You hear him grunting and a few thumps, like he's struggling with something, and then your cell door opens with a groan of metal and Karkat enters, holding a thick book awkwardly under one arm, while the other is...

"Holy shit, Kar," you say, sitting up and readjusting your glasses, "What the fuck happened?"

"I'm a fucking idiot, that's what happened," he snarls, stalking over to his chair and sitting down with a sigh.

You stare at him, worrying your lip a little, before you press on. "Seriously, the hell did you go? I was waitin for you all a yesterday, an now you show up with your fuckin arm all busted up. What gives?"

Karkat gives you an odd look. "Why do you want to know?"

For some reason, that offends you. "Because I... because I got fuckin left alone for a whole day, an I had Kan watchin over me the next! Why else?"

"Kan?" Karkat says, raising an eyebrow and smiling a little.

Fuck. "Shut up," you say, scowling, "It's easier to call her that than just Maryam all the time."

"If you say so," Karkat says. He hesitates. "I was in Freeside."

"Huh?"

"Freeside. You wanted to know where I was a couple days ago," he says, looking at you like you're stupid. "What, do you not know where that is?"

"I'm a fuckin scout," you snap, "A course I know where it is. I meant why were you there in the first place."

Karkat nods his head down at the book on his lap. You stare at him, confused. He stares back at you, then rolls his eyes.

"I went there to get  _this_ , moron," he says, "Well, okay, not at first. I went to see my brother, and he gave me this."

"Wait, your brother? You mean the one you said was one a those Follower people or whatever?" you ask, sitting up straighter.

He gives you an irritated look. "Yes, dumbass. I only have one brother."

"I thought he was back in California," you say.

"Nah," Karkat replies, "He followed me out here so he could join the group that's set up in Freeside. I went to visit him for your sake, by the way, so you're welcome."

Okay, now you're completely lost. "My sake? The fuck do you mean by that?" Wait, he said something about that book, right? You can't read the title from here, and you're getting kind of apprehensive. From what you know about the Followers, you don't think you're gonna like something that they think is helpful. Maybe Karkat won't make you read that; maybe he's just gonna read it himself, to get ideas for "helping" you, or something. You shift nervously on your sad excuse for a bed. 

Karkat furrows his eyebrows and looks at you, cocking his head. "You alright, man?" Shit, is he getting worried about you? For some reason, the thought makes something in your chest ache, which only makes you more uneasy.

You put on your best scowl and look away from him. "'S nothing. I don't wanna talk about this anymore."

Karkat continues to give you that concerned look, and you wish that he'd just  _stop it already_ , the throbbing  _something_ in your chest is only getting worse. You clench your hands into fists, your fingernails digging into your palms and your knuckles turning white. Why had you even been so eager to see Karkat in the first place? Except... it's nice to see him, even though he's NCR. At this point he's something to you that's... almost like a friend, you guess. Except you don't have friends, especially not anyone that's outside the Legion. You suppose he's pretty close to being one, though, which makes you both kind of happy and nervous. You're relieved that he's okay (or alive, at least) but at the same time this conversation has taken a turn that's making you extremely anxious.

For the millionth time, you wish that the patrol that'd caught you had just killed you then and there. You wish you had gone down fighting, like you should have. You wish that you didn't have to endure this humiliating (confusing) treatment. You don't know why they're doing this. Did you offend some deity and this is your weird punishment? You can't think of anything you've done wrong, besides being dumb enough to be captured in the first place.

You think that you're completely justified in saying that it sucks to be you.

Karkat stares at you for a moment, way too fucking long in your opinion, and then shrugs. "Alright. I can tell you more about this later, I guess."

You decide not to say anything about that, and just nod instead.

"So," Karkat says, "Lemme just get this fucking thing out of the way." He shifts, hefting the thick red book off his lap and lowering it to the floor with his good arm, grimacing the entire time.

"You want me to help with that, or...?" you ask.

"I got it," Karkat growls, nudging the book against his shitty romance novel pile with his foot. "There. Okay. Is there anything you want to talk about, or are we just gonna have another hour or so of you napping while I read? 'Cause that gets really fucking boring really fast, as awesome as my books are."

You fidget a little, which earns you a confused look from Karkat. You take a deep breath before saying, "Actually, Kan an I talked a bit."

"So she said," Karkat says, snorting out a laugh, "I can tell, too. You don't look like shit anymore."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" you say indignantly.

"Well, for one," Karkat says, "You're not wearing rags anymore. Two, your hair actually looks like it's been washed."

"Oh," you say, flushing a bit. "Yeah, uh... Kan said what I was wearin was really fuckin ugly an smelled awful--not her exact words, but you get the idea--anyway, she brought in these this mornin," you motion at what you're currently wearing: a simple white t-shirt and a pair of cloth pants, in much better condition than what you were wearing before. Plus, they actually fit you pretty well. "Then she... basically pushed me into the shower."

Karkat laughs. "What?"

"Not literally," you say quickly, blushing even harder, "She just hauled me outta here and made me go use the shower in the bathroom across the hall. The guards've let me in there before, duh, but apparently forgot that I need to fuckin bathe once in a while 'cause they never gave me enough time to. That shower's really goddamn tiny, by the way."

"I bet it is," Karkat says, "You really needed that, though. You were getting kind of rank."

"Oh, fuck you," you say, grinning, "I don't make a habit a lettin myself get all filthy like that. My hair was gettin all  _stringy_ , Kar, it was awful."

Karkat rolls his eyes. "Yeah. Speaking of hair, wouldn't that streak there have grown out by now?"

"What?"

He gives you another are-you-fucking-serious stare. "The streak. In your hair. How did you even get it like that in the first place? I didn't know the Legion let its soldiers have access to hair dye. Hell, I didn't even know hair dye  _existed_ anymore."

You burst out laughing. "Oh my God, Kar," you say, "I don't dye my hair. Shit's totally natural." You brush your hair back with a hand, trying to style it up a little to show off the streak a bit more. "Runs in my family."

It's Karkat's turn to look embarrassed now. Before you can enjoy it, however, he cracks a smile. "And here I thought you couldn't get any weirder."

"Oh, shut up, my hair's awesome. It's better than your tangled mess, anyways."

"If I had the use of both of my arms, I'd throw Kankri's shitty book at you," Karkat says, "Anyway, besides fussing and making you presentable, what else did Kanaya do with you? You said you talked, right?"

You bite your lip and nod. Karkat looks at you expectantly and waves a hand, urging you to go on. You see no point in putting this off any longer, so you oblige.

 

Almost an hour has passed by the time you finish explaining what had happened between you and Kanaya. For a few moments, he is silent, sitting there with his arms crossed, staring intently at you. You fight the urge to duck your head nervously. It's kind of funny, you think miserably to yourself, how quickly your conversations with Karkat can go from easy and relaxed to extremely uncomfortable and intense.

Karkat's voice is soft and thoughtful when he finally speaks. "You said you're starting to think that Kanaya was right about some of the things she said. What, exactly, are you talking about there?"

"I, uh," you say, fumbling your words, "I told you about how she said somethin about 'words bein put into my mouth,' or whatever. I thought it was bullshit, but..." you trail off helplessly.

"Now you're not sure," Karkat says.

You nod. "Yeah. But just because the Legion put some ideas into my head doesn't mean that's a bad thing," you say quickly.

"That sounds pretty bad to me," Karkat says flatly.

"It ain't bad if the ideas are true," you say, curling your lip, "I mean, sure, they taught us some shit that was kinda hard to swallow, but that's just how life is, ain't it? The Wasteland is a shitty place, an the Legion taught me that their way is right an everythin else is wrong, but that's  _true_ , so how is that a bad thing?"

Karkat stares at you for a moment. "Wow, okay," he says, "I don't even know where to start with that."

"Huh?"

"First of all," Karkat says, holding up a hand to silence you, "How the fuck do you even know that the Legion's right? From where I'm sitting, it's pretty damn wrong."

"That's 'cause you don't know anything," you snap, "Legion territory's some of the safest parts a the Wasteland. Raiders don't even  _dare_ to try an cross the border."

"Yeah, and  _that's_ because they know better than to wander into land that belongs to people that would--and can--kill them as soon as look at them. Living in a society that fucking revolves around war doesn't seem very safe to me."

"You haven't seen how it works," you grumble.

"I don't want to," Karkat retorts, "Secondly, teaching people that there's only one acceptable way of thinking and  _forcing them_ to conform to it, right or not, isn't okay. At all. End of story.  _NO_ ," he says loudly as you open your mouth to protest, "It is  _not okay_. Christ, how are you not getting this?"

You narrow your eyes. Yeah, fuck what you said earlier about wanting to talk to Karkat. Fuck it right to hell. You do your best to keep your voice even as you reply. "What isn't okay is lettin the people in the Wasteland keep livin like ignorant savages," you say, "Caesar's fuckin savin people by conquerin them. Yeah, it's harsh. I get that. But it's also fuckin  _stable_ , too. Before we conquered them, all those tribes an villages were livin in total chaos. Now they're part a the Legion, which doesn't have all the bickerin and infightin  _some societies have_ ," you say, looking pointedly at Karkat.

Karkat breathes out heavily through his nose, looking like he's trying really hard not to start yelling. "Do they ever let you  _think_ at all? Or do you just immediately accept whatever they tell you?"

You open your mouth, then clamp it shut. Wait. It takes a few moments for you to gather your thoughts, and your voice is hesitant when you finally get the words out. "I... I did argue. Once. When I was ten. I knew better after that, though."

Karkat gives you another worried look, damn it, why won't he stop  _doing_ that? You try not to fidget uncomfortably. You fail miserably.

"What did they do to you then?" he asks.

You freeze, gazing at him with wide eyes. You remember all too well what they did, even though you try not to. You remember your punishment when you'd spoken against them, when you'd protested. You still have the scars on your back. You remember sitting, huddled on your small, lumpy bedroll, your arms wrapped around you as you tried to ignore the aching emptiness in your stomach as you went yet another night without food. You remember the relief you felt when you'd given in and were finally fed. You remember thinking that maybe they were right, maybe you did deserve being treated like that. But you also remember how you had felt before that, how you'd been terrified by the barbarity of the Legion. You remember feeling frightened and alone.

"They beat me," you say softly, "An gave me a few lashes. With a whip. An they starved me after that. I... I learned my lesson." You swallow hard, avoiding Karkat's eyes.

There's a long silence between you two. Finally, Karkat speaks. "You said before that the people you conquered were ignorant savages. Does that apply to your village, too?"

You blink and stare. "Wh... I..." you fall silent. You have no response for that.

Karkat just nods, giving you a small smile that's so compassionate that you feel like you might cry. You didn't know Karkat was even capable of making that expression, but it's putting you at ease a little. Somehow. He gestures at the thick red book at his feet.

"I think it's time you took a look at this," he says.

You're not really in a place to argue.

\---

"Maryam!"

You look up, startled. You'd only just started to head towards the mess hall for dinner, and now you're suddenly being halted by a private whose name escapes you. You raise an eyebrow.

"Yes?" you ask.

The woman looks extremely worried. This can't be good. "I'm Jen Yuan," she says, "One of the people escorting Karkat a few days ago?"

"Ah, yes," you say, "How can I help you?"

"Well," Yuan replies, "I was told..." she trails off and rubs the back of her neck nervously. "Okay. Hsu called me into his office and told me that I was supposed to stand by the gate and keep watch for the search party, and he told me that if they came back I was supposed to tell you, and--"

"Hold on," you say, "The search party? As in, the one looking for Feferi and Sollux?"

"Yeah," Yuan says, "They just got back. They found your friends, but... You need to see this."

She hurries off, motioning for you to follow. You do, a knot of worry forming in your stomach.

You have a feeling that the situation has just gone from bad to worse.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit short compared to the others due to writer's block. But hey, things are gonna start heating up soon! Be very afraid.

You honestly have no idea what Karkat thinks he's doing, making you read this. The book weighs a ton, and you think it'd make a pretty effective doorstop with how huge it is, but you manage to haul it over to your bed with little trouble. You don't know how Karkat managed to carry it in with only one usable arm; either he's really strong, or you've gotten a lot weaker in the past few days in this prison. You hope it's the former.

Anyway, it's probably best if you just focus on reading this damn thing for now. Karkat's still giving you that worried look that's making you feel all vulnerable and shaky, like he's looking right into your fucking soul or something. Like he's scrutinizing everything you just said about the Legion. It's making you extremely uncomfortable, and you do your best to force all thoughts of what the Legion had taught you--and Karkat's opinion of it--out of your mind as you open the book to the first chapter.

It's been a long time since you've read a history book, but it's nice to see that your enthusiasm for them hasn't changed. You soon find yourself delving right in, all thoughts of Karkat and the anxiety-inducing conversation you just had quickly driven out of your mind. It's relaxing, reading about ancient cultures and wars. Especially the wars. You can't say you've ever heard about these Romans before, but halfway through the second chapter, you find yourself starting to admire them. Any government that was capable of lasting almost 500 years is a pretty successful one in your book. However, these chapters are describing the Roman Republic, and if the cover is anything to go by, you haven't gotten to the main subject yet: the Empire.

It takes until the end of the third chapter for the text to wrap up it's account of the Republic. You flip eagerly to the next page, admittedly very interested in reading about this Empire the previous chapters had been building up to. But when you see the title of the chapter, you freeze, your eyes wide. You almost feel like you've been slapped; your mind has gone blank from sheer surprise, and it takes a few moments for you to shake yourself out of your brief daze. You look up at Karkat, who's leaning back in his chair, reading one of his shitty romance novels. He looks tense, though, and he steals a glance at you. When he sees you staring at him, he sighs and shuts the book. You feel a flare of anger and you slam the thick red book shut.

" _Julius Caesar_?" you say furiously, "The fuck kinda shit are you tryin to pull, Kar?"

He just looks at you, his face calm and his mouth pressed into a thin line. "I'm not trying to 'pull' anything," he says simply.

"Bullshit!" You shove book off your lap and onto the bed, beside you. "This ain't funny!"

Karkat doesn't even flinch, which only infuriates you more. "Just keep reading."

"I ain't gonna read any more of this blasphemous shit!" you snarl, crossing your arms.

Karkat just sighs again and returns to his book. You sit there and silently fume, staring intently ahead. You can't believe this. The first few chapters had been  _great_ , you'd been admiring how similar the Romans' tactics when it comes to war were to the Legion's. Especially the way the army was organized; sure, the fact that the military structure was the same as the Legion's, down to using the same names, was kinda disconcerting at first, but you brushed it off as just a coincidence. The Romans were impressive, and the way their army was organized had probably been used countless times in the Old World. It makes sense that it would carry over now.

But this is just insulting. Not only the fact that Karkat would have the audacity to use Caesar's name, but that he actually had you  _interested_ in this book, which you're now convinced is some sort of horrible joke. You grit your teeth, furious at Karkat, and furious at yourself for believing that this book was actually legit.

You glance down at the book, then return to glaring at nothing in particular. You're not gonna touch that piece of shit ever again, that's for sure.

Less than thirty minutes later, you haul the book back onto your lap and flip to where you left off. You see Karkat looking at you out of the corner of your eye, but he thankfully says nothing. You read silently, your eyes darting across each and every line of text, feeling more and more sick to your stomach as you go. This... this isn't right. This just isn't  _right_. You'd been able to brush off how similar the Roman military was to the Legion. But this...

The chapter starts with briefly describing Julius Caesar's early life and career, which, while interesting, wasn't what was making you so disconcerted. It isn't until you get to his military campaigns that you start to feel sick. The conquest of Gaul is similar,  _too_ similar, to Caesar's--that is, the one you know--conquest of the myriad tribes of the East. In fact, similar doesn't even cover it. They're almost exactly the same. By the time you reach Julius Caesar's move to take control of Rome itself, you think you might throw up. It's like reading an account of your Caesar's plans for the Mojave, just with different names. Julius Caesar and his army crossed the river Rubicon and captured Rome. Your Caesar is going to cross the Colorado River and seize control of New Vegas.

This is a joke. It has to be. There is no way that some ancient civilization could be so much like the one you're so familiar with.

 _If it's a joke_ , a small, traitorous voice in the back of your mind whispers,  _Then why is it in such a thick, detailed book? You've only been here a week. No one could have written this, printed it, and made it into a fully fledged book in such a short amount of time._

You barely pay attention to the rest of the chapter. Something about an assassination, whatever, that's not important compared to what you just read. Finally you give up and shut the book, again placing it beside you, much more carefully this time. You lean your elbows against your knees and place your head in your hands. Your fingers tug on your hair, but you hardly notice.

This just doesn't make any  _sense_.

Karkat suddenly clears his throat, making you jump and sit bolt upright. You're startled to see the trays of food sitting beside his chair. Only one tray is empty. How long were you reading? Your stomach lurches again, and you must look terrible, because Karkat stands up, looking extremely concerned.

"Hey, man," he says, "Are you gonna be okay?"

You open your mouth to respond, though you have absolutely no idea what you would say. It's just as well, because at that moment your stomach gives in and you double over, barely having the presence of mind to lean over to the side so you don't splatter bile all over your feet. You can feel Karkat rubbing circles into your back as you hack and spit, and when you're finally, blessedly finished, you look up miserably at him. He doesn't say anything and just continues rubbing your back soothingly. After a few moments he gets up, fetches a cup of water and an empty bowl from one of the food trays, and holds them out to you.

"Rinse," he says.

You wordlessly obey, grateful to get the burning taste of your own bile out of your mouth. Your throat is still stinging when you finally have your wits together enough to speak. "I-I'm sorry," you rasp.

Karkat just shrugs. "It's not your fault. I had no idea that making you read that book would make you fucking spew your guts. I probably wouldn't have shown it to you after the little talk we had earlier if I'd known that."

"Sorry," you say again, "Shit, this is so fuckin embarrassin, pukin just because've a dumb  _book_."

"It's not your fault," Karkat says again, firmly. He's being so gentle and soothing, and that just makes you feel worse. He shouldn't be doing this for your sake. Instead of saying anything else, Karkat stands up and walks over to the barred window. "Hey," he calls out to the guards, "Can I have a mop or something?"

"What?" you hear one of the guards--Johnson, you think--say. He walks over and looks through the window, grimacing. "Christ. Yeah, I'll go get one. Anders, I'll be right back."

The other guard just grunts a reply as Johnson disappears from view. Karkat returns to sitting beside you and begins to rub your back again, which you're incredibly grateful for. You stare down at your feet, breathing hard through your nose. Neither of you say anything for a while.

"I... I don't know what the fuck to think about this," you say finally, letting out a small, bitter laugh.

Karkat's mouth twitches slightly into a faint smile. "Yeah, I was pretty shocked, too. I mean, I didn't hurl, but it was kinda a lot to take in."

You cringe. "God, I can't believe I did that. I'm such a fuckin disgrace, I can't even read without--"

"Stop," Karkat says, startling you. You look at him as he goes on. "Let's not have you going on some self-deprecating bullshit rant about how awful you are. I have neither the patience nor the interest in convincing you to stop saying shit that isn't true."

You blink. "What...?"

"I'm not done. You aren't a disgrace just for getting sick; you just learned some heavy shit, I don't blame you for puking. Also, you seem to be under the impression that what just happened makes you weak, which I gotta say, is total fucking bullshit. You spent fifteen or so years in the fucking  _Legion_ , and if that doesn't make you a strong person, I don't know what does."

You're completely stunned. "But, Kar, I..."

"Nope," Karkat says firmly, "End of discussion. Stop being so hard on yourself."

You have the nagging feeling that Karkat is being extremely hypocritical, telling you to do that, but you decide it's probably best if you don't mention that. You just nod and go back to staring silently at the ground. You don't look up as, a little while later, the door swings open and one of the guards enters with a bucket of water and a mop. You don't look up as Karkat holds out his good arm to take the mop and receives an incredulous stare from the guard. You don't look up as Karkat blinks, looks down at his broken arm, and flushes with embarrassment, stepping back to let the guard into the room. You don't look up as the guard mops up you puddle of vomit and then exits just as briskly as he had entered, muttering something about not believing that this is what he's getting paid to do. You don't look up as Karkat sits back down beside you and places his hand on your shoulder.

"You wanna talk about it?" Karkat says softly.

You grit your teeth and close your eyes. "Kar, I... I need some time to think about this."

Karkat just nods, saying nothing. You sigh, grateful of his understanding. As much as your head is reeling right now, having Karkat sitting beside you is reassuring in a way you haven't felt in a long, long time.

 

Dinner rolls around much faster than you expected. Of course, you have no way of telling the time in your cell. You're a little startled when the door is suddenly pushed open by one of the guards. You nudge Karkat, who has apparently dozed off a little. He sits up and blinks groggily.

"Wh... oh," he says, yawning. He turns to look at you. "Sorry, man. Didn't mean to fall asleep on you." He hesitates, then adds, "Are you gonna be alright?"

You give him a wan smile. "I dunno," you say, "Probably. This is just... a lot to wrap my head around."

Karkat claps you on the shoulder. "We'll talk about it when you're ready," he says. He nods at the red book. "You want me to take that, or...?"

You shake your head. "I'm gonna need this," you say, having no idea how to express what you're currently feeling.

Karkat seems to understand, though. "See you tomorrow, then," he says.

"Yeah, see you."

A few moments after Karkat leaves, you move the red book to the floor and lie down on your bed, staring up at the ceiling. In these past few hours since you read the book, you've come to two conclusions.

One: everything you were taught about Caesar and his holy conquest of the Wasteland was a goddamn lie.

Two: you don't know why they lied to you about that, but you're pretty sure you aren't going to like the answer.

You spend the next few hours thinking about your Caesar and the other, ancient Caesar. About why your Caesar would have such similar goals, and how he knows all of this Roman stuff so well. You remember the conquest of the East, the battles you had been in, the countless tribes that you'd fought. You think of the stories you'd been taught, about Mars cleansing the world with fire and sending Caesar to unite the lawless savages that were left.

It was all a lie. All a fucking lie.

You're still thinking about this when you finally give in to sleep, and that night, you dream of a cross on a hill, silhouetted against a burning sky.

\---

"Karkat!"

You're surprised to see Kanaya running towards you. You'd thought she'd gone to bed early; you hadn't seen her in the mess hall, nor was she in the medical tent when you'd gone to get your evening dose of painkillers from Nurse Surly. You yourself were on your way to your tent, feeling completely exhausted, but apparently that's going to have to wait.

"Kanaya, what the fuck?" you say, frowning. She looks flustered, which is unlike her at all.

She slows to a halt beside you, and, panting a little, she says, "Sollux and Feferi are back."

"What... really?!" you say, your eyes wide. "Are they okay, what happened--"

"You're going to have to see for yourself," Kanaya says. She grabs your good arm and tugs you along, completely ignoring your complaints.

Eventually she leads you to a small tent near the walls surrounding the camp. You have no idea what it's for, but when you and Kanaya duck inside, all you see are a collection of chairs, a table, and nothing else. Sitting in two of those chairs are Feferi and Sollux. There's a couple other people in the room, but you pay them no heed at the moment.

Instantly you stomp over to them. "What the fuck were you thinking?!" you yell, "You could have gotten your dumb asses killed! You think you can just waltz out of camp whenever you fucking feel like it?! I can't _believe_ you guys are that stupid, I don't know how you are even able to _breathe_ with the sheer levels of stupidity that you--" A hand is suddenly placed on your shoulder, starling you into silence.

"That's enough, Private," says a familiar, male voice.

You stiffen. "Colonel Hsu," you say, gaping a little. You snap out of your shock quickly, standing as straight and formally as you can. "Sorry, I--"

"At ease," Hsu says calmly. He glances at Feferi and Sollux, who both look incredibly uncomfortable. Good. "And there's no need to scold these two. I've already done that."

You're still tense, but you force your body to loosen up a bit. "Yes, sir," you say, stepping back. You make sure to shoot another glare at Feferi and Sollux, who at least have the decency to look ashamed. Then you pause, noticing something that you hadn't before. Feferi's wearing civilian clothes, so you can see her neck clearly. It's covered in weird red, raised marks that run down her neck and disappear beneath the collar of her shirt. You've never seen anything like it. They almost look like the branches of a tree, like the ones you'd seen pictures of when you were little.

"Feferi," you say, "What the hell happened to your neck?"

Feferi looks over at Hsu, who sighs and nods.

"We'll continue our discussion in my office," he says before ducking out of the tent.

Once he's gone, you look at Feferi expectantly. "Well?"

Feferi purses her lips. "They're, uh..." she says, "They're lightning scars."

"Lightning scars," you echo, "How the everloving fuck did you get  _lightning scars_?"

"From lightning," Sollux says.

You glare at him. "Don't be a fucking smartass. Was there some storm I wasn't aware of? Because from what I understand there is almost absolutely nothing in this part of the Mojave that could make you get  _hit by lightning_."

"Karkat, it's okay," Feferi begins, but you cut her off.

"No, it's not fucking okay, you went out into the ruins by yourselves and without permission, and then you come back with fucking lightning scars, and you have the nerve to say that it's fine? What the hell is wrong with you two?" you demand, your hands balled into fists at your sides. _  
_

"KK, will you just let us explain?" Sollux says.

You huff. "Fine. Give me whatever shitty excuse you two thought up."

"Actually," Feferi says, looking at something over your shoulder, "I think that it'll be best if our friend here tells you what happened."

"Friend?" you say. You turn to see what Feferi is looking at and jump in surprise, saying quite a few naughty words.

A woman you've never seen before is standing beside the tent flap. You hadn't noticed her when you walked in, and she looks kind of amused at how startled you are. She's obviously not NCR; she's wearing simple, stitched-together leather armor, and she's got jet-black hair that reaches down to her hips and is way too messy for someone in the military. You stare at her suspiciously, but she seems oddly relaxed for someone that's non-NCR in the middle of the biggest military outpost the Republic has in the Mojave. She even smiles at you, her green eyes warm behind a pair of large, round glasses.

"It's nice to meet you, Karkat!" she says, "Your friends here told me a bit about you."

"Who the fuck are you?" you say.

"Wow, they were right about you being rude," the woman replies nonchalantly, "My name's Jade Harley. I came across these two," she stares pointedly at Feferi and Sollux, "Out in the ruins and helped them out a bit."

You narrow your eyes, but she seems completely unfazed by your hostility.

"Oh, relax," she says, "I'm not here to steal NCR secrets or anything. I have some business in New Vegas to take care of and I happened to find your friends on the way. I'm just a courier."


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry that this chapter took so long. I would make excuses about work and classes and whatnot, but really I'm just a lazy bastard and I lost inspiration for a while. 
> 
> Enjoy!

"So let me get this straight," Karkat says for the third time, "You two went out into the ruins to 'fight Fiends,'" he added air quotes for emphasis, "And you only realized that that was a monumentally, mind-bogglingly, incomprehensibly stupid idea  _after_ you found yourselves in the middle of a fucking shootout with those crazy fucks. And then you," he points at Jade, "Magically showed up and saved these two dumbasses. That about right?"

"Yes, Karkat," Feferi sighs, "We've been over this."

"Okay," Karkat says. He pauses. "You do know that your story has more holes in it than a caravan that's been hit by raiders, right?"

"KK--"

"No, shut the fuck up," Karkat snaps, "I will not believe for a second that either of you are stupid enough to try and take on Fiends by yourselves. Stupid enough to leave the camp without permission, maybe, but not so incredibly moronic to do something like  _hunting Fiends_ like they're fucking geckos."

"Karkat, calm down," you say, but that just makes him focus his anger on you.

"Calm down?  _Calm down_?! Kanaya, why the  _fuck_ should I be calm about any of this?"

"Because it's not accomplishing anything other than giving us all a migraine," you reply.

Karkat grits his teeth and gives you a glare that might have been slightly intimidating if you weren't so familiar with him. You meet his gaze calmly, and after a few moments he huffs, crosses his arms, and looks away.

"Alright, fine. Sure," he grumbles, "I  _won't_ yell at these moronic assholes until their ears bleed, even though they fucking deserve it. Happy?"

"Somewhat."

Feferi sighs. "Karkat," she says softly, "If I could tell you everything, I would. But it's not for me to decide." You don't miss the quick glance she gives to Sollux.

"What kind of bullshit excuse is that?!" Karkat says.

"It's the only excuse you're going to get right now, KK," Sollux snaps. 

Karkat looks over at him, surprised. Sollux is glaring daggers, and you swear you can feel his anger in the air, like some kind of electric charge, and for a split second you think that you can see fear underneath the anger. It's gone before you can be sure. Feferi reaches over and places her hand on Sollux's knee. He looks over at her, his eyebrows raised, and she smiles and murmurs something you don't quite catch. Sollux sighs and slumps back in his chair, leaving you and Karkat watching in total confusion. Jade only looks mildly curious.

"Mind telling us what the fuck that was about, or are you gonna hide that from us, too?" Karkat asks.

Feferi shoots Karkat a disapproving look. He seems to get the hint and fall silent.

There is a long, awkward pause. Finally, your surprise visitor decides to chime in.

"Are we done with the shouting match?" Jade asks, "Because I'd like to go have that chat with Colonel Hsu now."

" _WHAT?!_ " Karkat practically shrieks.

\----

Instead of going straight to Colonel Hsu, Jade apparently decided to take a brief tour of Camp McCarran. Without asking. You anxiously shadow her, not entirely sure if there is supposed to be a total stranger roaming around the base. You're just glad that you managed to get Karkat to stay behind; having him following you around would only make you more flustered. You're pretty sure Brooks isn't gonna be happy when he finds a furious Karkat in the medical tent, but that is not your problem right now. 

You get a few curious glances from your fellow NCR soldiers as you pass. Jade doesn't seem to mind at all.

"So, your name's Kanaya, right?" Jade asks.

"Uh, yes," you reply, "Hey, um-"

"A lot of you guys have weird names around here," Jade says, "Is that like some California thing? I've been all over, but never to California. At least never beyond the outskirts. Not to say that your names are bad! Just really weird."

"Listen-"

"You know, seeing big military stuff like this is pretty new to me. The Wasteland's a big place, especially to a Courier, but organized governments are hard to come by. I'm kind of impressed!"

"Wait-"

"I've been hearing a lot about you guys. You're trying to copy pre-war governments, right?"

" _Will you please let me speak?!_ " you snap.

Jade pauses and stares at you, her eyes wide behind her glasses. You sigh and meet her gaze calmly.

"I'm sorry, but I really don't know if you should be allowed here," you say, "It's not that I don't appreciate you helping out Sollux and Feferi, because I do, but you aren't a part of the NCR nor are you here on any official business. How did you even get in?"

"Through the main gate," Jade says, "Where's Colonel Hsu's office?"

"In the terminal, on the first floor and to the East. But  _why_ did the guards let a total stranger like you in?"

"I asked politely, duh," Jade replies. You can't tell if she's joking or not.

Before you can say another word, Jade turns and strides off towards the terminal. You follow her anxiously. Colonel Hsu hadn't seemed at all concerned about Jade being in the camp back at the tent, but you never really could be sure with these things.

So you trail after Jade silently, your anxiety only mounting as you enter the terminal.

"Which room is it?" Jade asks you.

You point at it. Jade grins, nods, and then makes a beeline for the Colonel's office. Right before she enters, she turns to you and asks, "Is it alright if I go in by myself?"

You blink. "Uh, yes, that's alright."

"Thanks," Jade says with a smile, showing off slightly oversized front teeth. She swings the door open and ducks into the office, the door closing behind her with a resounding thud. 

You are completely at a loss as to what to do about this. You can hear muffled voices behind the door. Colonel Hsu's tone of voice doesn't appear to be alarmed at all. In fact, it's quite the opposite. He was  _expecting_ this total stranger to wander into his office. You frown and back away from the door. Mere words cannot adequately describe how utterly confused you are.

It feels as if it's been nearly half an hour before Jade leaves the office. She looks around, sees you sitting by the slot machines, and beckons you to come over.

"Hsu wants to talk to you," Jade says.

"...What?"

Jade just shrugs and heads for the exit. You watch her leave, briefly considering following her, then think better of it. You shouldn't keep the Colonel waiting. You take a deep breath, steel yourself, and enter his office.

\---

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you really, really,  _really_ hate Brooks right now. The fucker wouldn't let you leave the tent until well after sunset; something about having to make sure your Med-X and stimpak doses or balanced, or whatever. You don't really care. You just want to go back to your tent, lie down on your ratty mattress, and sleep until your damn arm heals. Brooks has finally conceded to increasing your stimpak doses, so that at least shaved some time off your recovery. How nice of him.

So now, way later than you would have liked, you are lying on your back, staring up at the canvas ceiling of your tent, trying to ignore the dull throbbing of your broken arm. It seems like your entire tour of the Mojave at this point has been a neverending conga line of bad luck. This recent debacle with Sollux and Feferi is just the icing on the cake. Not to mention the stranger that is now undoubtedly wandering around the camp. You haven't seen her or Kanaya since they shoved you into the medical tent. You have some choice words to share with both of them when you see them again.

The chems are starting to catch up with you, and you yawn. Tomorrow you're gonna vent about this whole mess to Eridan.

As you drift off to sleep, your last thoughts of are the Legion prisoner you've grown so fond of. You don't feel like there's anything wrong with that anymore.

 

_Silence. The clatter of utensils. You, your brother, and your father are sitting around the table. You haven't touched your food. You are suddenly less hungry for dried food and tough, old meat than you usually are._

_"Karkat, are you alright?" your father asks._

_You can feel his eyes on you. Kankri's too. You take a deep breath. You've been practicing what you were going to say over and over, and yet you still don't feel ready._

_"Dad, I've made my decision," you say, struggling to keep your voice even._

_"Oh, are you finally going to join the Followers?" Kankri asks, "Because I believe that the experience would--"_

_"Kankri, let your brother finish," Dad says._

_You take another deep breath, brace yourself, and blurt out, "Dad, I want to join the army."_

_There is a long pause. Finally, Dad speaks, his voice flat and calm as if he was talking about the weather._

_"No."_

_"Dad, listen..."_

_"No."_

_"I just..."_

_"I said_ no _, Karkat."_

_Your temper picks this time to rear its ugly head. "Why not?" you snap, getting to your feet, "Do you want to keep me here my whole life, Dad? I'm twenty-four years old, and every time I try to leave, you find some way to rope me back into staying. I don't want to be a priest, Dad. I don't want to be a priest, I don't want to be a Follower, I want to go out and see what else there is in the world, and being a soldier is the only way I can get away from here!"_

_"There_ is  _nothing else in the world!" your dad replies, his voice starting to rise, "I've seen it. Your mother saw it. Kankri saw it, even if he was too young to remember. There's nothing but emptiness out there. Emptiness and death. Which is why we stay in the city. You have a life here, Karkat."_

_"It's not a life I want!" you yell, "Sitting around, listening to you give boring sermons, watching Kankri go out and play doctor when I'm just forced to sit here and do nothing! That isn't a life!"_

_"Karkat," your dad says, his voice low and shaky. You think you can see his eyes watering. "We are not discussing this any further. Sit down and eat your food."_

_You don't sit down. "I already enlisted," you say quietly._

_Dad and Kankri both freeze. Your father opens his mouth, closes it. You clench your hands into fists at your size and press on, trying to keep your voice as even as possible._

_"I'm going tomorrow at noon. I... I need to go pack my things." You turn and leave the table. Just before you leave the room, you glance around at see your father staring at you, no longer angry. If anything he looks tired. "I'm sorry, Dad." You head over to the room you share with Kankri, sit down on your bed, and try your best not to cry._

_It doesn't work._

_\---_

The sound of clattering metal wakes you up. You look around blearily and are surprised to find Kanaya rooting through the metal box in the corner where you and your tentmates store your belongings. There is a knapsack beside her.

"Kanaya?" you mumble, your voice slightly slurred with sleep, "What're y'doin?"

Kanaya jumps slightly and turns to face you. She looks slightly upset, though you can tell she's trying to hide it.

"I apologize for waking you up," she says softly, "I was hoping to let you sleep until... until I left."

That makes you sit up. "'Until I left?' The hell are you talking about?"

Kanaya presses her lips together into a thin line and says nothing. She turns back to the box and begins collecting her meager personal belongings and putting them into the knapsack.

"Kanaya--"

"I'm sorry, I really am," she says, "I was hoping that we wouldn't have to say goodbye. I really hate goodbyes."

"What--"

"Isn't it obvious?" Kanaya says, turning to face you. "I've been reassigned. I'm going to Camp Searchlight."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chronology of this story is gonna deviate a little from the game. So some events that happened slightly before the game starts will be later on for plot reasons. 
> 
> I hope this next update won't take a year to write.
> 
> EDIT: okay okay you know what
> 
> I have completely lost interest in this fic. I am not really all that involved in the Homestuck fandom anymore, and I don't really want to continue writing this. I'm going to orphan this work, but I won't leave you all on a cliffhanger. Here's how things were gonna go down here:
> 
> \- One of Eridan's guards reveals himself to be a frumentarius and offers to bust Eridan out. Eridan accepts, somewhat reluctantly when he thinks about Karkat.
> 
> \- Karkat, who has become increasingly disillusioned with the NCR over the chapters and is considering joining the cause for an independent New Vegas, catches them. Sollux and Feferi join the confrontation. Kanaya has left by this point.
> 
> \- Fighting breaks out. The frumentarius dies, Karkat and Eridan manage to escape, Sollux and Feferi have to clean up the mess they made and are in danger of serious punishment from the higher-ups. 
> 
> \- Karkat and Eridan wander through the Mojave, trying to find somewhere to hide, when the two NCR soldiers that had escorted Karkat before catch up to them and confront them. Yet another fight ensues. One of the soldiers dies, Jen is severely injured but manages to stagger back to base and survive.
> 
> \- At Searchlight, Kanaya is in range of the nuclear blast set off by the Legion agents and becomes a glowing sentient ghoul. Fearing that she will be shot on sight by her human peers, she flees.
> 
> \- Eventually the entire crew gets together and they all fight for an independent New Vegas yaaaay
> 
> I'm sorry that I can't continue this, I really am. I just don't see the point in forcing myself to write something I just can't give less of a shit about. Thank you for sticking with me and again, I'm sorry for orphaning this work. Goodbye.


End file.
